Review of Betelnut restaurant in Ko Samui

Betelnut restaurant review in Ko Samui
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Be afraid, be very afraid of this restaurant.

I wanted to share my terrible exprience of this small restaurant in Ko
Samui island in Thailand as quite many travel guide books have
recommended it. Couple of weeks ago my wife and I went to Betelnut
restaurant in Chaweng beach for a dinner, since we had read a very good
review of this restaurant. Betelnut is claimed to be almost a gourmet
level restaurant with a very good service, excellet food and very high
prices. We had totally different experience, except the high prices of
course.

Service was quite crude, especially when you compare it to thai
restaurants, which typically have very good service. Betelnut however
is not a thai restaurant, it's owned by a foreigner and it claims to
serve California style thai food. The prices are very high, you can
easily eat one week in good thai restaurants with same amount that you
have to pay in Betelnut. Food is decent, nothing special, definitely
nothing to do with gourmet. For example Poppies restaurant in Ko Samui
has much better price-quality-service level.

Well, what was so terrible in this restaurant that I need to write this
review? It's the owner. We were having a romantic dinner and trying to
enjoy the decent food and wine and just suddenly the overweight owner
sits down to our table. He says nothing just sits there and is sweating
like no one else, basically he smelled very bad, because of the sweat.
Then my wife trys to start a conservation and asks if he is the owner
and now he starts talking about how he has travelled all over the
world, lived in Istanbul and made food in different countries. He keeps
talking about how great guy he is allthough we didn't even ask him to
sit down to our table. Finally he leaves and goes to the next table and
start showing his tattoos and telling stories to next guests. This goes
on for the whole dinner, this bad smelling and sweating owner goes
through every table and just sits down or tells "wonderful" stories
about his "great" adventures. Most amazing is that the owner is from
California where people typically have good basic manners, at least in
this price range restaurants.

Best part was when we were leaving the restaurant and owner came to
shake our hands. He quietly said me: "Don't come here anymore, you are
not welcome in this restaurant. You are too cold." The owner probably
didn't like us, since we didn't want to listen his "amazing" stories
and smell the sweat. For me it's fine if he wants to choose his
customers, but if the prices are so high, service so bad, food only
decent and the smell unbelievable, he could be a little more polite.

I have never been so unsatisfied to any restaurant than Betelnut. My
advice to all of you is to stay far away from this restaurant as it
might ruin your romantic evening. I will never go anywhere near to
Betelnut and also warned our hotels (Central Samui Beach Resort and Le
Royal Meridien) about Betelnut.

Johan Forsberg