Author: _Harald

After work one evening I opted to order takeout from Saigon Thai rather than my usual Chinese food from the very good Maison Szechuan around the corner. I ordered a small Tonkinese soup (pho), a small wonton soup, 2 imperial rolls, a shrimp Pad Thai...and a lemongrass beef dish. Now I’m old enough to have eaten at hundreds of Thai and Vietnamese restaurants in different parts of the world and those cuisines rank in my top 5 favourites. I’m rightfully suspicious of fusion restaurants but I’d long been meaning to try Saigon Thai. I placed the order with the woman on the phone and rather than repeat it back to me she hemmed and hawed and finally said “You have too many small soup”. I’d never heard that before and I thought it was perhaps a language issue. We went back and forth for close to two minutes me asking why I can’t order two appetizer soups when that’s what we want. I am after all the customer and I’ll determine what I want. She said that “perhaps you want to order a large soup” in a way that made me think of gangster films. It was the strangest exchange I can remember having. It’s important to understand that the prices here are somewhat higher than most such eateries and my order, with tax, was approximately $70.00. That’s up there for a Tuesday night take-away. I finally said, “I’m the customer and that’s what we want to eat.” She finally let it spill when she replied, “My boss say you don’t order enough food “. Well that’s clear enough and definitely qualifies as a “Wow”. I told her I wouldn’t be ordering anything and hung up. There’s no reason on earth to give a business like this your custom. It’s certainly a very suspect way to run your business and I just get a bad feeling when dealing with people who think this way.