Mint Downtown Thai

I had a lunch special and my wife had dumplings. The food was excellent and so was the service.

Food is amazing and the service is on point. It’s nice to dine in or get delivery. I recommend the green curry shrimp and the drunkin’ noodles.

Nothing special or outstanding. A little pricey for average tasting Thai food.

We decided to try out Mint Thai as one of the participating restaurants for restaurant week. The only difference between the restaurant week menu and the regular lunch menu is that it included a dessert. The service was really slow. Not only that, the food portions were tiny and for their special menu, they tacked on 20% gratuity for themselves. If the service warranted 20%, it wouldn’t have mattered, but since the service was so slow, it took over an hour to finish our meal which is not good for people who work in downtown who have a limited amount of time for lunch. Avoid this place.

I wish if they had a choice of 0 star. The service was really really bad. We came there for lunch during restaurant week. The lady server who has a green long hair was super rude to us. We just want to let them know we are ready for dessert, and she walked away. I guess cause the gratuity is included so they don’t really care about the service anymore. First time here but would never come back again.

The food is good but the service is so slow! The egg rolls are probably the best I’ve had. Be prepared to wait.

Went in for dinner and had to leave because of the smell. It was awful. Not sure what it was or where it was coming from. No thanks!

I ordered some takeout here since I live right down the street, and I plan to never come back again. It was literally the worst thai food I have ever had. Maybe since they pay high rent in downtown they compensate by budgeting on the quality of food. I ordered the Chicken Pad Thai and it was super dry and flavorless. It literally looked like it had been sitting out for days. After a few bites and I tossed it in my trash and had a top ramen instead. Its no wonder this place always looks empty.

Chicken pad Thai was perfect. The pineapple shrimp stir fry was great too! I’ll definitelyyyyy be back!

Great lunch special, pad thai was great. Came with a little soup, salad, spring roll and a good about of pad thai for $ 8

I love the fact that I can order off of Eat 24, wait 10 minutes, then go down the street and pick up my order. There aren’t many great Thai food options in or near downtown SD, so I guess I am delighted to have Mint. Although the quality is better at some of Thai joints in Kearny Mesa and Mission Valley, this one hits the spot. The Drunken Fried Rice (Mild) with shrimp was great, but my roommate got non-​spicy chicken and it was as dry as sandpaper.
I came here for lunch once and it was OK. Nothing special, but not bad… the best thing is that it is so convenient if you’re living downtown!

Solid food and great lunch options. Our foursome ordered pad thai, pangang curry, drunken noodles, and curried fried rice. I liked the spice levels, though my gf warns that medium can sneak up on you. Portions were perfect for lunch, and at $ 7.95-$ 10.95…a great deal. We’ll be back!

I’ve come here a couple times over the last few years. The service had gone down hill. It was never great, but at least it was cheap. In the last few months, I’ve ordered for here twice and come here once for a sit down
My two take out orders were botched. Once they completely forgot a dish that they had charged me for. When I called and told them, they eventually delivered the correct order, but only an hour later! Another time, they told me 15 to 20 minutes for pick up and took an hour, which I spent waiting for my food at the restaurant. They weren’t even that busy. Even when eating in, they take their sweet time.
And that would be fine if the food was amazing or at least unique like donut bar. But it’s not. It’s nothing special. The lunch specials come with a bit of not very flavorful soup and a limp salad. The red curry is just okay, but they make it spicy with a chili flakes oil mix, so it’s not good. The pad Thai is dry. In fact, I think the frozen Amy’s meals you can get at Jimbo’s nearby is better. Just go somewhere else. I’ve given this place too many tries for others to justify the same.
Gave this place another try (3 months after my initial review), and was disappointed again. We waited way too long for our food, nearly 30 minutes. And they didn’t even bring out food all at the same time. Don’t come here.

Service was great, however the food didn’t have much of a thai taste to it.
We had the lunch combos which included: (nom-​thai) soup, garden salad, one egg roll garlic chicken entrée, Penang curry entrée, and a bowl of white/​brown rice.
The garlic chicken wasn’t bad, but by no means was is excellent or even thai flavored.
The Penang didn’t have any thai flavoring either.
A bit disappointed.

2 for $ 25 deal: perfect!
we had the calamari, yellow curry w/​chicken, and pad see ew w/​beef. everything was tasty and fresh.
service was friendly and fast!
will return! :)

$ 7 dollar lunch special is a damn good deal. Soup, salad, spring roll, and your main dish. I got the yellow curry, mild because I was told the this particular cook was heavy on the spice. Might want to ask your server who is cooking that day as you might think you can handle it and end up having a bad time. I went early in the afternoon on a Saturday and there was next to no one there, so service was prompt and everything tasted great. The mild was not terribly spicy, next time I will try the hot for sure.

I’ve never actually eaten at Mint Thai. We always get delivery (one of the main reasons we get Mint). Their Tom Kha soup is delicious… some of the best I have had. The drunken noodles and chicken pad Thai are also very good. Their spicy levels are perfect. I always get a level 5 and it’s just right. Prices for the noodle dishes range from $ 10.95-$ 15.95 depending on the meat you choose. I have to admit this is a little pricey but again I realize I am paying for the convenience of having my food delivered to my doorstep. The soups range from $ 5-​$ 15 depending on size and meat.
Overall very tasty food and quick delivery service.

Saturday night I’m pet sitting for a friend in downtown. She said to order dinner so I thought Thai. Seeing this had good reviews and did delivery, I ordered the E-​San Classic which included papaya salad (medium-​hot spicy level 7 – 8), chicken and sticky rice. Also bought Thai tea w/​boba. My friend, seeing that, told me to order the same thing but make her papaya salad just medium level at 4 – 5. The order came in about an hour but our boxes wasn’t marked for which was medium-​hot spicy and which was just medium. I open to look and they looked the same. Me, being part Thai, I would be able to tell it a part. I tasted both, and both had NO spice level to me. But to my friend, they were medium.
The Thai tea had no flavor. The boba was still a little hard. Sigh… I felt bad because my friend paid for it and tipped too.

I always like to root for the underdog.
Mint definitely is not as popular as nearby places like the bustling Lotus Thai in East Village, and it falls short of the exquisite experience at Rama, which was ranked by Zagat as one of the Top 100 restaurants in the country and consistently ranks high in San Diego Magazine’s annual best restaurants issue.
Regardless I have always insisted that people give Mint a chance because the food is good enough to satisfy your Thai craving, prices are reasonable, it’s next to Horton Plaza so you can park there with mall validation, and (I thought) you could get in and out pretty quickly because it’s never busy.
But there is a reason this place is almost always empty, as I realized last night on my latest visit: incredibly slow service and sub-​par, dry food.
When my dining companion and I were seated around 8pm on a Thursday, there were just one or two other tables with people. We got a booth, and then what followed was the longest, slowest dinner I could imagine. It didn’t help that my companion and I didn’t have a lot to say to each other that night, and we were there for over an hour.
It seemed there was only one (?) server that night but there was no one else in the restaurant so I can’t imagine the kitchen being overwhelmed. By the time she came over to take our drink orders, we had been waiting so long we just wanted to order everything — apps, drinks, entrees.
Food came up slowly. Our first item was the pork skewers which we were very dry. By the time the server came by to ask how we liked them, we said they were too dry and she apologized which was nice. The whole time we ate them, we talked about how good they had been at Phuong Trang a few weeks ago when we dined there. Kind of sad to be reminiscing about better dinners of the past as you’re eating a lackluster one.
From there, it took even longer to receive our entrees — pad thai with chicken and drunken noodles with beef. I had selected beef as it was recommended by the server, but the meat was tough and dry. The drunken noodles were on the oily side, and I mostly tasted the red and green peppers. It is a LOT better at Rama which instead has dimensions of flavors. Maybe this was my fault for ordering it mild as this is usually a spicy dish. I tasted my companion’s pad thai, my favorite dish at Mint, and it was definitely up to snuff. Perhaps I would only stick to that dish in the future, as I still like how it’s the sauciest pad thai i’ve had in San Diego.
Although she was very sweet and had a pleasant and helpful attitude, our server was hardly ever around, so we were over halfway done eating our entrees before we could ask her for the spice tray, which definitely should have been brought out at the start of the meal.
The good thing is that on Thursday nights it’s Happy Hour all night, so you can get $ 3 beers and most of the appetizers (marked with a smiley face on the menu) are HALF off! But I would rather go somewhere else where the meat isn’t dried out and doesn’t have one of the slowest service experiences in town.

I’d recommend the Mint Downtown Thai and give it high marks because the food is good quality and the prices are very affordable for the downtown Gaslamp district/​area. You can get out with a full belly on their lunch special which can cost around $ 10 after tax/​tip, no drink (have ice water, it’s healthier and free!)
The service is friendly, ‘tho not all together proactive nor attentive at all times, maybe due to the laws of supply (waiters) and demand (customers), where they may be overworked in the amount of tables to be served.
It’s good food, not uniquely great, nor remarkable in any way that makes it rise above other Thai restaurants, but feels consistent in quality.
I had the Pad See Ew, which is always one of my favorite dishes, it’s like a sweeter version of the Cantonese Chinese «Chow Fun» dish, but add some broccoli.
The soup that comes with the lunch special is very flavorful and a nice way to start the meal.
The parking… well. it is the Gaslamp, so depending on when you go and your willingness to walk coupled by parking karma and knowledge of the area… it’s not that difficult.