Lime Leaf

Dang! This is fantastic! Like, actually good Thai food in Charlottesville! I have to tell you that I was super surprised.
This is much less sweet and much more delicately flavored than most of the Thai food around here. There’s actual aromatics and even the suggestion of proper caramelization from the wok. There’s a good balance of heat and portions are solid. Particularly pleasant, though, is the fact that their rice is reliably well-​cooked.
Eat here, and cease to experience regret. The service is only okay, but that’s not really something I’m inclined to care about.

This is my go to Thai restaurant. I go here every other time my parents or friends visit. So I don’t usually like the typical pad Thai and drunk enough noodle so this review is not based off those dishes.
I always get the soft shell crab with kapao sauce and Thai fried rice. Both are exceptional and perfect for my seafood cravings (since cville lacks that). The drunken noodle is usually too salty or too spicy but, again, not what I come here for. The other meat and vegetable dishes are good and the sauces aren’t too different to me.
Great service and atmosphere!

See review below**
They just need to hire more staff desperately, and train the current ones on customer service. Not once did our waitress apologize for such a long wait. Our group was also clearly dressed up to go to a semiformal so it wasn’t like we had calculated 2 plus hours for a dinner. I’d say however the food is quite good and cheaper than other places for dinnertime. The wonton soup was incredible. I enjoyed the fried bananas too. I’m more than willing to come back again for the food, maybe on an off day this time.

2.5 stars rounded down.
Good Thai food, but the experience was vastly overshadowed by its horrendous service.
To start off, I will say that the food is very good. I got the Lime Leaf noodles and they tasted great, not too oily, and just the right amount of spice. The toppings/​meat on the dish were proportionate to the noodles, which were the base of the dish, and that’s something I appreciate. Overall it was a very filling dish and very much worth the price.
Now the service… What can I say?
We were seated at 6:30pm pretty promptly and received menus. We were not approached again for orderings drinks or anything until 20 minutes later at 6:50 (really?). We were kind of tired of waiting at this point so we ordered our drinks and food all at once so then we could minimize wait time.
Or so we thought… It wasn’t until 7:40pm until we got our food. That’s right. a whopping 50 minutes of wait time for our food. During this time, we were approached once by a server who said our food would be out in a bit, but that wasn’t until 30+ minutes after we ordered. Maybe the restaurant was understaffed, I grant that. But it was completely ridiculous how we were never even notified that the food would take a while or there was some underlying problem that was slowing service down. We were straight-​up ready to get up and walk out but felt that we had invested way too much time to bail at that point. After finishing our food, it took another 15 – 20 minutes to process our checks. I should point out that it’s not even that big a restaurant to begin with in terms of space and seating, so I have no idea why it would take so long.
Maybe it was an off day and things were just busy and bad, so if I come here again, I might update my review. But for my group, this was our pre-​semiformal dinner and we were there for TWO HOURS, ²⁄₃ of which was spent waiting for our food or someone to serve us, which FUBAR’d our plans big-​time. Pretty sure too that there were two other groups who were seated after us and got their food first, but don’t quote me on that.

One of the best Thai restaurants in Charlottesvile. Their Thai hot — nice and hot. A recurring favorite of mine is Southern Noodles with fish balls Thai hot — absolutely delicious.
Their summer and spring rolls are very good, their vegetarian dishes are excellent, and their Thai sticky rice with mango is terrific as well.
I’ve tried probably half of their menu, Pad Kapow, Drunken Noodles, Pad Thai, on and on — i have yet to encounter a dish I didn’t enjoy.
One strange quirk — they don’t give you a spoon, which is the primary eating utensil Thai people use to eat. It’s very weird they do that — so I always have to ask for spoons when we sit down.
Service is friendly and nicely paced. Highly recommend.

Lime Leaf came highly recommended by my local friends who have basically tried almost every Thai restaurant in Charlottesville and we came here with a group of friends this weekend. I was highly impressed by the interior; every detail, from the chandeliers to the table centerpieces, was beautifully done and not overly gaudy.
The waitress appeared a little frazzled when we needed chopsticks or more water or takeout boxes because it seemed like they were understaffed and she had to dash around to wait on all of the tables, but overall we received good service.
I ordered the Lime Leaf Noodles ($ 10.95 for beef/​chicken/​pork) because I wanted the extra-​wide noodles, and others ordered vegetable curry, pad see ew and pad thai. Our food arrived at all different times so we ended up waiting for the whole table to receive our dishes.
The Lime Leaf noodles arrived with a lot more sauce than I expected, but was otherwise was delicious. I enjoyed the stir-​fried flat wide rice noodles and the plentiful red bell peppers, scallions, basil leaves, and ground beef. I had asked the waitress for the mildest spiciness level, but even the mildest had some serious heat to it. The sauce, though soupier than I expected, definitely made this dish unique, with a rich tangy flavor.
If I come back again I’ll definitely try the pad see ew, which is usually my favorite thing to order at all Thai restaurants!

I really like Thai. Went here for lunch the other day and ordered the Tom Kha Gai and La®b Gai. The Larb was exactly on point. The Tom Kha was so sweet that it was totally blech, not good. In their defense the waitress warned me that it was sweet. I don’t know who their typical customer is but it’s certainly not people that like Tom Kha soup.
With the number of great Thai restaurants in this town I think these guys are going to have to kick it up a notch.

Excellent! My favorite Thai restaurant in Charlottesville. The atmosphere is pleasant and the food is fresh, delicious and generous. I had Pad Thai and it was terrific. My friend had stir fry with cashews and chicken and she loved it. In the past I’ve also had the Drunken Noodles dush which is really yummy. The staff is friendly and attentive. I won’t go to any other local Thai restaurants after trying Limeleaf. The others are rip off.