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| - I'm not sure why great curry - or Thai food for that matter - is difficult to locate in a city like Madison. Thai restaurants in the Madison area should be knocking it out of the park left and right. Curry, with all its forms, is ubiquitous among menus of Thai restaurants and should be perfected with the same proficiency of an engineer at NASA performing basic mathematics.
Sadly, there are no such engineers at Sa-Bai Thong. With a day off of work and a chance to frolic to a new lunch spot, I read up on Sa-Bai, and the reviews hyped them up so it was time to check them out.
They open at 11:00 AM on weekdays, so I chose an early lunch (11:15ish) to get ahead of the lunch crowd and provide the waitstaff ample time to impress me with their lunchtime prowess.
I love duck and ordered their roast duck curry. Given the choice of cucumber salad or chicken soup, I chose the soup to chase away the fall chill. I also added hot green tea and an egg roll, because, well, why not?
The egg roll came hot and ready. It required the accompanying sweet and sour sauce to give it a major boost in the flavor department. The green tea arrived with the egg roll. It was scalding hot and needed a couple minutes to cool. That was when I noticed the white serving plates and tea mugs were stained gray with age along their edges and brims and sported numerous scratches and chips. Sipping from a chipped glass is not exactly enticing. When in the hospitality business, this is a glaring red flag.
The soup arrived next and produced the second major red flag. It had good flavor, but it arrived lukewarm, something taken very seriously during health department inspections. Hot foods should be maintained no lower than 140 degrees for your safety. Food poisoning is no fun.
Hoping to find solace in the curry, I was sorely disappointed at what arrived. The bowl arrived with the same ugly spots as the others. Though the presentation was honestly the best thing about the dish, its flavor was dismantled by the lack of items expected to be included int he dish, as described in the menu.
"Red curry sauce with deep fried boneless roast duck, bamboo shoot, pineapple, green bean, squash, red pepper, tomato and basil."
First, "deep fried" also means they dip the duck in batter for whatever reason. Again, not mentioned in the menu. The batter on top remained crispy while the batter along the sides and bottom of the 3 decent pieces of duck were soggy, giving them the texture of wet bread.
Second, they left the layer of fat on the duck. With the batter covering it, the fat layer never had a chance to become crispy. The fat was loose and runny.
Third, not present were the green beans, squash, or the pineapple. For some reason, these were replaced with green grapes. If the promised ingredients were unavailable, surely the staff should have been aware of it, because the kitchen would have communicated it, right? Something should have been mentioned upfront. Besides, who puts grapes in curry? It was weird. I tried it, and did not like it. To add insult to injury, the grape tomatoes and grapes were ice cold in the steaming hot curry, making for some very confused taste buds.
Fourth, when serving sizable pieces of protein, a serrated knife should be made available. It was not. I had to ask for a knife to cut the duck chunks. I, in turn, was given a butter knife.
I'm fairly tolerant of many things. The duck curry was disappointing on so many levels that I did not even finish it.
So many red flags - under-cooked food, damaged/stained dishes, missing/phantom ingredients, confusing flavor/texture paradigms - the entire experience really impressed upon me that the place was poorly managed. You can tell when a restaurant puts love and effort into cooking. This was not one of those places by a long shot. I will never return, and I urge anyone with yearnings of Thai cuisine to try another venue.
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