Tam's Thailand Food or a place to avoid

If you've ever been on Adams Avenue, you might have noticed this strip mall.

It's west of DeMille's and right next to Mariposa Ice Cream...

I remember seeing this window a few years ago and my curiosity was piqued. Then I read the reviews on yelp and was even more intrigued. There was the usual mix of "I hated this place" and "OMG, their food is great!". But what really got my attention were the horror stories of the "crazy" lady that runs the place. I thought, it can't be that bad....Can it?

If you ever walk by the place and see an older (50's?) Asian lady smoking outside, that is most likely Tam, the owner of this place.

TC and I were just down browsing at the Adams Avenue bookstore and had a few more places to stop by. I thought, "Here goes...why not!".   The owner greeted us and invited us in. I wanted to sit here right in front where there was a lot of light. She thought we might like the other room better...


which was this room. It was darker than I wanted and for about ten minutes we sat there. A man and his father came in and ordered teriyaki chicken and ginger chicken (not very Thao or Lao). I moved TC and myself back to the front room. This room had all kinds of "wise" sayings that the nearby men had fun repeating. There were also many different paintings on the walls, and at some point a rather bohemia (okay BUMMY) looking man and his girlfriend came in; he might've been the artist or one of the artists because he had a canvas in his hand and was looking to hang it up. It turns out they knew the owner and were having a really loud conversation about coffee. She wanted them to buy her coffee from 7-11 while he replied that their coffee was bad but she didn't care, she wanted it anyways.  We couldn't help butoverhear their conversation because she was pretty loud.


TC only wanted the #1 lunch special, which as you can see says "Bean sprouts and Chicken stir fry". I ordered the fried potato curry eggroll appetizer (we were still planning to eat somewhere else that day).


Okay, do you see any bean sprouts? No?  Well, there also wasn't any chicken either. It was beef and TC has given up red meat. I asked Tam about the bean sprouts and she said, "I don't have any" and left the room to go back to the kitchen before I could even address the meat issue.  The dish, by the way, was very weak. The rice tasted old and the vegetables and sauce were flavorless. TC could have cooked a better meal than this. Frack.

When she finally came out, I explained, nicely, that TC ordered the bean sprouts with chicken and this was beef.  She told us that she thought we ordered the beef. I told her, "No, she ordered the lunch special #1 which has chicken."

We even put the beef on another plate.She looked at our plate and said, "She ate the beef" and I told her, "No, we set it aside and it's on that plate" (pointing to it).  She looked at  me for a  long beat and said, "What do you want me to do".  (Really? She has to ask me?). I asked her, nicely, if she could please replace the beef with chicken. She took the plate of rice and went back to the kitchen. I was already thinkig of what bad stuff she could be doing to the food.

So,....the kitchen door is closed but we could hear her talking loudly, "She said Beans not Beef!" several times. I thought she was talking to that artist guy but he was in the other room. Tam was by herself in the kitchen. Then, TC and I could hear her banging some pots around loudly.  Awww, fk. I was already wishing we were done and out of there with a sinking feeling.

She finally brought out the plate with the cooked chicken chunks on it saying, "you try".  By this time, we were desperate to leave so after perfunctorily picking at a few pieces, I tried to calculate how much we owed so we could sneak out of there. The potato curry egg rolls were okay but on the oily side. Tam told us that the sauce was homemade and that she was one of a kind, saying that she was half Thai and half Burmese.

Tam came out and shouted $11.24! I wasn't sure if she was talking to us because the guy and his girlfriend were back in the front room. He said that was our bill and he could take care of cleaning off our table. I asked if he worked there and he said that he helped her out sometimes. WTH. He didn't look like an employee.  I settled the bill and didn't leave much of a tip because of the fk-ups.

Maybe we got her on an "off day" but for what we had (which wasn't Thai or Lao or Chinese), the food wasn't that great. It seemed like the owner's friendliness turned on a dime when I asked about the bean sprouts and the beef and chicken. OMG, a word to the wise. NEVER GO HERE.  It's not worth it.

This being said, I knew ahead of time what we were getting into after reading the reviews. Because of my curiosity, we experienced crappy service and subpar food.  I'm surprised this place is in business. It seems to out of place in Normal Heights as well...

Tam's Thailand Food (in the Adams Plaza)
3456 Adams Ave
San Diego, CA 92116
(619) 280-8137

There is no website (surprise surprise) but here are the overwhelmingly dismal and crazy reviews from yelp. There are stories of her yelling "Fk you" to a customer whose child was playing with sugar packets, another story of her berating her employees in front of everyone, and the list goes on.

OMG, we got the EFF out of there as soon as we could! That was NOT a great lunch and the vibe was so wierd...

Our next stop would be lunch Part 2 at a place we should have gone to instead, but first, a caffeine fix...