Chao Baan - St Louis

Place is nice and clean. But extremely disappointed with quality of food and service. We ordered spring roll, Tom Kha soup and fried rice with chicken. The spring roll was good, but the soup was cold and fried rice was without chicken. When we complained on fried rice, and asked for what we ordered, they charged us for the fried rice without chicken as well that we did not order. They said they will give 50% discount on this dish. When we did not agree to pay for what we did not order, the server was angry. He was more concerned for his tips then satisfying customer. I don’t recommend this restaurant.

Limited staff (sign posted on host podium), but delicious food. The portions are more than generous. We ordered #CrabRangoon to share and I had the fried tofu Pad Thai medium. It was yummy even as leftovers! Street parking available. Would recommend.

I wanted to start off by saying this was by far the worst experience I’ve had at any restaurant or place of business. May 28th was my birthday and my family and I decided to dine at Chao Baan on Manchester/Chouteau. My mother spoke highly of this place, and after checking the reviews I figured it would be worth the shot.From the very beginning our waiter took our order but upon bringing the food to the table he would just drop it off without announcing who ordered which dish. This resulted in many of us having to figure this out on our own or someone at the table eating someone else’s food. With a table of 9 people this consistently happened throughout the night, but we overlooked this detail because they seemed short staffed and our waiter was giving it his all. Shortly after our bartender brings out the drinks and spills alcohol all over my 12 year old son. The drink also spilled into his food, which they didn’t offer to refund or get him placement. There was glass underneath the table, the table was wet and my son was wet. Our waiter and bartender apologized, but didn’t come over to clean the table or move us to a different table. They just kept bringing out the entrees until we asked to be seated elsewhere. There was a fruit gnat inside of my uncles drink and, shortly after my aunts order, which originally was screwed up by our waiter finally arrives and it has hair inside of it. When we mentioned the hair inside of her dish our waiter goes on to say, “The industry standard doesn’t require cooks to wear hairnets.” Everything he said from that moment on was extremely condescending and sent us over the edge.At this point we were doing our to hold it together, but after he began disrespecting my family I asked to speak with his manager. The manager decided to discount the bill by 50% which was generous of him but overall I wouldn’t recommend this place to ANYONE. Not just because of the service but overall the food wasn’t worth the price. You could definitely do better by going to Thai 202.

My family and friends dined here. The experience was absolutely horrible! There was no explanation of how the menu or ordering worked. For those who haven 't been the menu is a QR code and all ordering is done online. If you actually want to interact with your party this is not the place to come as everyone stares at their phone half the time trying to figure out how to order. And beware that there is no submit button. As soon as you add an individual dish then it 's considered ordered. Suddenly food started appearing at our table. Again, instructions from a waiter would have been helpful. And all of your table 's food does not come out at once. Some people were almost finished eating while others had to wait another 10 minutes. My food was so bland when it finally came that it was inedible. I was told that was the simplest dish on the menu and usually kids ordered it. It was not on the kids section of the menu. It had no seasoning whatsoever! I wish a waiter had been there at any point to discuss the menu. When I finally got someone to call over and said how bad the dish was they acted like I should have known that! I 've gotten this dish in other restaurants and, while simple, it has been flavorful and delicious. I was offered soy packets for my bland dish. It was only after I complained again, as the soy did nothing, that I was offered another dish. Also we saw on their website that the restaurant was offering a 20% discount to healthcare workers. My mom is a doctor so we asked for the discount and the restaurant tried to refuse as they said the offer was old. There was no date on the offer and it was live on their own website! Never at any point were we asked if the food was good (it was not) or if we needed anything. In fact every time a waiter had to speak with us they acted like it wasn 't their job! We ended up spending about $40 per person on bad Asian food when we could have gotten good Asian food much cheaper somewhere else. Then they still ask for a tip at the end even though they don 't take orders, give advice on the menu, or even interact with the guests! If you hate interacting with people then this is your place! Otherwise go elsewhere if you actually want good food and service. The next time I see a QR code menu and ordering I will turn around and walk out the door.

We've been going to Chao Baan for a couple years now. I used to love both the food, and the ambience. Perhaps due to Covid, or staffing shortages, service has declined significantly. You're encouraged to order and pay as well as tip 20% using a QR scan code. Our server this past Sunday was clearly overwhelmed; he and one other person had responsibility for all customers. The hostess was obviously not trained for the position, and tried to seat us at the worst possible table, even though there were no large parties, and plenty of room away from the busiest part of the kitchen. I sure hope they recover from this.