Has a restaurant ever made you feel like you weren’t supposed to be there?

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That was Wayla. The Thai food is solid, better than fine, and the space looks the part. But what happened from the moment we walked in made it hard to care about any of that by the time the food arrived.

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It started with the host. We asked to move tables because a loud party had been seated right next to us and there was an empty two-top on the other side of the room. He told us it was reserved for a party of five. It seats two people. Ten minutes later he sat a couple there, no reservation, they told us so themselves. That’s not a mistake. That’s a choice.

The music didn’t help. Whoever curated the playlist landed on early 2000s R&B, Ja Rule, Eminem, grime, and drum and bass, all of it running together at a volume just loud enough to make our conversation impossible but not loud enough to actually be a vibe. Remember, the table next to us was literally shouting like drunk animals.. yelling louder than the music playing at equal volume. It felt less like atmosphere and more like something you’d put on to make people leave faster.

When we raised the table situation with management, the response was worse than the original problem. No accountability, no acknowledgment that anything had gone wrong, in fact it was much worse, (so bad, we won’t even type out what happened on the internet). While disappointing, we weren’t the first people in our circle to leave Wayla feeling like that. When the same story keeps coming back from Black and Brown diners, it stops being a coincidence. Treat your customers like customers, and don’t be disrespectful to people who are paying to eat at your establishment.

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The one person who showed up that night was our server. She was warm, attentive, visibly aware that something had gone sideways and genuinely trying to make it right. She deserves better than the environment she’s working in.

The food itself is worth talking about separately from all of this because it actually is good. The curries are well-built, the portions are fair, and if you came across the menu blind you’d be interested. But there are Thai restaurants in that neighborhood doing comparable food without the experience that came with it at Wayla. Your money and your night are worth more than a maybe.

We won’t be back. And now you know why.