Lime Leaf

This place is a find for Charlottesville. Having lived in Seattle for a couple of years and having developed a serious taste for some good Thai food I missed it quite a bit when I moved back to the Hook. Lime Leaf suffers a bit for less than stellar service and a few of the dishes miss their mark (the Lime Leaf noodles in particular were less than impressive) but their chef really knows his or her way around some classic Thai dishes. Lad Na, Pad Thai, Pad See Ook and other noodle dishes are excellent. They will really make it spicy if you ask (we love spicy and 3 stars does us fairly well at this place). The shrimp appetizer stuffed with chicken and mushrooms and ginger is also good. The sticky rice with mango for dessert is lovely. Our best experiences with Lime Leaf have been with take-out. more

When you enter "Lime Leaf" you may be struck by how nice the interior looks... or how enormously large and fancy their menus look. That should be your first clue that this is going to be an average restaurant. With two great Thai options in the area (Thai '99 and Thai '99 II), this place apparently feels it needs to add class to its settings to attract customers. The food that I got essentially amounted to a chinese dinner. It was heavy on the sauce, and not particularly delicious. That said, perhaps I just had a subpar experience. I just don't care for Asian restaurants with American waitstaff. more