First taste: Maile's Thai Bistro

Maile's Thai Bistro

By Mari Taketa
Special to Metromix

We love Thai. We love the joyous complexity, how the searing heat of chilis can slap you upside the head and make you cry even as sweet flavors caress and a sassy tang can tease you.

We’ve been to Thailand and eaten everything from gristly, fish sauce-marinated roast pig in a mountain shack to street cart noodles and dried fish salads in Bangkok —all yum. But Thai food in Honolulu? Not so much: lots of goopy noodles, ketchupy sauces, cloying curries drowning in coconut milk. And we still haven’t found a good pad thai.

We started hearing about Maile’s Thai Bistro about a month after it opened, all good stuff, which is pretty unusual for a new place. So we headed out to Hawaii Kai with taste buds primed…

Maile's Thai Bistro
Hawaii Kai Towne Centre
808-394-2488
Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-midnight Friday, Saturday