Thai Spice on Bayshore Gardens

Worst Thai food I have ever eaten in my life and I have eaten A LOT of Thai food. We ordered Shrimp & Vegetable tempura for a appetizer and its was burnt so bad it was almost black. We also had pad Thai for a entrée and I couldn’t even eat it. On top of all this it took nearly 1 hour to even get our appetizer and we almost left before the entrée. Hard to believe this place is still in business.

DO NOT GO HERE. What a horrible experience. Our food was very very slow and when we mentioned it to our server she was horrendously rude to us. We asked to speak to the owner and he threatened to call the cops on us for trying to tell him his waitstaff was rude. PLEASE don’t waste your time on this pathetic excuse for a business.

This was a departure from our usual Thai choices, and a friend warned us it takes forever to get your food. I didn’t feel that way, the miso soup is wonderful, the peanut curry delicious, and everyone seemed really happy we tried a new place. The server (I never know if it’s the owner, so please forgive me) seemed tired and a little unhappy, and I’m very sensitive to service. I used to waitress — enough said. We’ll be back because the food was so good.

You have to try this place! Don’t let the location fool you. The food was delicious! Service was kind of slow but so worth it. Order an appetizer and Singha beer — you’ll never notice how long it takes to get your meal. Wish I would have taken pics of the appetizers but we devoured them.

This is located in the craziest strip mall ever! I mean rarely customers and wonder how you stay in business. at least when I show up. I will have to dig out one of my pictures to enlighten all the Unilocal readers!
I popped in last night for more Thai Coffee. I had tried it at Thai Palace earlier in the day and was in love. This Thai Coffee wasn’t as amazing as Thai Palace’s but I gave them a 4 star because I’ve eaten here before and for the money, it’s def worth more then 3 stars.
They are reliable and friendly. Good quality. Great prices.

This place has very reliably good Thai food. The ambiance is fine for what it is but in reality they never seen to have a lot of in just customers but they clearly do a brisk take away business. I have yet to be let down by the food and the young lady (jazz) who is seemingly always working is also always very attentive.
For Thai food in this area this place and Thai Palace are both good choices but for me it’s not worth the extra 15 minutes drive for effectively the same food in a little better atmosphere.
If you like fish I highly recommend their whole fish. It’s always fantastic but it’s really a lot of food and, if you do it justice, a lot of work to eat.
Enjoy!

the food is great, the presentation is very nice, but our service was very bad, it took over an hour for our food, (a #9, #10, pad thai and a thai fried rice) and there was only 2 other tables besides ours (2 adults and 2 children). if the food came out faster i would say a 4 – 5 star but it also could have been an off day for our waitress. my family may try again another day to see if that was the case.

Looking at Jane D’s review below, I have to agree on some points but I give it at least one more star than her. I have tried the Thai place on Cortez and Thai Spice and like the food here at Thai Spice way more than the other. I didn’t find the lunch price that unreasonable, given the quality of the food. The Pad Thai was perfect, generous, exactly the right level of spicy (hot for me) and accompanied by a consistently delicious soup and piping hot egg roll. The owner/​chef is not only to be complimented for his cooking prowess but for his artistic interpretation as well. The presentation was as good as any fancy, «five star» place I have ever been to at several times the price.
I’m gonna have to conclude that those who reviewed this negatively must have had a different owner or chef and encourage you to try this one without apprehension.
I am certain you will enjoy it as much as I do, which I now include on my weekly restaurant rotation.
My «$» review below is for LUNCH prices. Dinner gets «$$» but is still reasonable.

I used to go to this restaurant often when I worked in the area. The ownership/​management has changed in the last year or so and some changes are for the better, some are not. I visited this place shortly after the turn over of the management and I was really disappointed in the food. I haven’t been back since then, but decided to give it another whirl today during my Unilocal ‘week of chicken pad thai’ personal challenge. This is the 4^th Thai restaurant I’ve visited for lunch this week.
I came for the lunch special, but there was a little bit of sticker shock since this place charges a couple dollars more for its lunch specials than every other Thai restaurant I’ve visited. $ 8.95 for the Chicken Pad Thai here, comes with soup and a spring roll. The small bowl of coconut curry soup was excellent and it was brimming with fresh crisp vegetables. The spring roll was nothing special and it seemed kind of cold, only medium warm. I think that is due to some sort of time warp the server was in. There were only 4 occupied tables with a total of 7 customers, but it seemed to take forever to get the opening glass of water, the soup, etc. I sat there a good 10 minutes after ordering before the soup came. The temp of the spring roll told me that my plate had probably been ready minutes earlier but the server didn’t get to it. There is really no excuse for that with so few customers.
The Chicken Pad Thai arrived as I was still working on the soup. It is obvious the chef in that kitchen gives a damn because the presentation was artful and elegant. The crushed peanuts were on the side of the main heap of Pad Thai, which is different than how most Thai places serve the dish. It also came with a wedge of lime. I squeezed the lime on the entrée and it was a really great melding of the lime juice and the spices. The food was very good, but the food at the Thai place on Cortez is just as good and it comes out faster and it is only $ 6.99 for their lunch special. Given the choice between the two places, I’d go for the Cortez place. I am not sure you’d get back to work on time if you only have an hour if you choose to dine at Thai Spice.
I have to state my personal pet peeve here, too. There are 3 large TV screens in this restaurant, all tuned to some sports channel (sound off). It is really unpleasant and «cheap» to try and enjoy your lunch with a bunch of TV screens blaring their images at you. There was no escape visually, no place to rest your eyes where the movement of a television screen wasn’t tugging at your peripheral vision. I would expect that if I chose to dine at a pub or a place like Beef O’Brady’s, but you don’t expect it at a Thai restaurant that seems to desperately trying to go ‘upscale’ based on its prices and food presentation.
In closing, I might try them again. The food itself was pretty good except for the spring roll, but the service was too slow, the prices were above what other similar places charge and the atmosphere was dictated by television sets, which to me is no atmosphere at all.

Located in a strip mall that is very inconspicuous. So far my lady and I have been waiting 20 mins for our meal and there is only one other couple here! I couldn’t imagine being here with a full house. Food finally came, it was worth the wait. Looks an taste delicious! Would give it 5 stars except the chicken was slightly over cooked. Overall very pleased.

Really bad food. Had a curry and drunken noodles and my stomach was upset for the next day. The drunken noodles were oily. The panang curry was watery and had few veges in it. Good staff service thou.

We used to enjoy this restaurant under the previous management. Unfortunately tonite we had an extremely bad experience. Our food took over an hour when there was only one other table occupied in the restaurant. Then the food came almost cold. There was a carry out order or two maximum apparently ahead of us, but we ordered immediately and mentioned our children of 3 and 6 were hungry now. The waitress said it was our fault for not ordering appetizers (afterthought upselling?) and that the other table had ordered 5 dishes for 3 people (Wah!) and there were so many carryouts (liars!). My curry seafood (18.95) was full of sharp pieces of broken mussel shells and our daughters pad thai (s) which were ordered mild and came with half the plate decorated with Sirachi red pepper sauce (idiots!). Waitress said they would re-​cook pad-thai’s, but we just scraped the noodles to one side after having already waited over a full hour once for our food. I asked to speak to manager about the wait and he said if we didn’t like it leave now and not to ever come back. These people have no idea what the food service industry is about. We were mistreated verbally and offered no form of compensation for the ridiculous wait. No discount. No dessert. Only unkind words and a true waste of time.
Note: If all this wasn’t bad enough our little girls both got tummy aches from the food. We asked them not to put fish sauce in the pad thai since our daughters are both vegetarian as is my wife. I hope they are out of business soon and somebody else buys it, it will be good riddance to bad rubbish

I’ve eaten lunch here many times and the food is excellent and service attentive. No complaints.

They changed hands recently, but I feel its poor as ever. I ordered a California roll and the sunshine rice was warm. The roll was worse than any roll I have ever had at any Chinese buffet. The red curry was the right spice level, but the veggies in the dish were all different than promised on the menu. The space is huge, and unfortunately, the Tv’s were playing conflicting shows and really sunk the atmosphere. STRANGE place.

Thai Spice is located in a shopping plaza off of 41. They have weird weekend hours, but I go here for lunch at least once a week. It is not close by any means to my job, however my co-​workers and I think that it is quite worth the drive. They have a frequent diner card, which is also a benefit.
Their lunch specials run $ 6.95−7.95 depending on the type of meat chosen, seafood being the most expensive. It is a great deal at that price considering the portions and that the meal comes with steamed jasmine rice, seasonal side of fruit, crispy spring roll, soup of the day, and entrée. That’s a lot! The dinner menu runs $ 9.95−18.95 (most expensive being duck) depending on what you order, and does not come with all of the sides that the lunch comes with. Also, the portions are not much larger than the lunch.
I LOVE their curries, which are rich and filling. Many times Thai curries will be loaded with too many bamboo shoots and are watered down and thin. These curries are thick with coconut milk, and loaded with fresh seasonal veggies with your choice of seafood, meat, or tofu. They are very glad to make any substitutions that you may wish for, such as no bell pepper for me, and they are very generous with the meats. I have been eating Thai food for over 10 years and have never started liking green curry until I went to Thai Spice, because I always thought that it was too spicy. Their Penang is VERY peanutty, almost like peanut butter. The Mussaman curry is amazing loaded with cashews and a rich cream sauce.
I do not recommend their Pad Thai noodles, they are loaded with fish sauce, oil, and not much peanut flavor. That is just my opinion though, many of my co-​workers love it.
Their Thai Iced Tea is the lowest price that I have ever seen at a restaurant at only $ 1.75 and it is up to par with the expensive stuff.
I have eaten at almost every Thai place in Bradenton/​Sarasota and this one is the best in my opinion.
The atmosphere is relaxing and the wait staff is very friendly and they do not rush you. They used to have sushi, but they do not anymore, you will see the sushi bar is still there.