First Sukho Thai spawned Koh San Road and now Chef Nuit left Koh San Road to open Pai, Toronto's latest delicious Thai restaurant.
Having had a blast in the small town of Pai when I lived in Thailand I had great memories come back as we headed down to check out this new restaurant.
It was a good thing we made a reservation, something that I don't think you can do at Sukho Thai or Koh San Road, as Pai was packed with a 90 minute wait at the door.
Of the three restaurants listed above Pai has the nicest decor and the seating is more spaced out which is a nice change.
The food, as advertised was delicious. I feel like Pai's prices are the same or a little more than at Koh San Road and definitely more than at Sukho Thai. The one difference is that you probably get more food at the other locations.
The squash fritters were delicious and similar to what you get at Koh San Road. The difference was that they were served with an especially amazing sauce at Pai.
The Northern Thai sweet grilled pork on a skewer was also tasty.
The Pad Thai had a nice tang to it.
The Massaman Braised Beef had a lovely flavour and the meat flaked apart easily.
We ordered the Khao Pad Saparot with chicken which came served in half a pineapple which was a nice touch.
We finished up with the one item on the dessert menu - mango sticky rice. This is an absolute staple in Thailand and I don't believe I have seen it on a menu in Toronto before. Other than that fresh mangoes come right off the tree in Thailand with a special flavour, this dish was very close to what you get in Thailand. I had not tasted this combination of flavours in years.
We struck out and ordered mostly new dishes I had not tried before. Pai has many of my favourites, like green curry and Khao Soi, but I have yet to try them at their establishment.
One of the staff told us how sorry they were that they got behind in the kitchen and took 45 minutes to serve our food. I am glad that they are so busy and appreciated the apology, but they probably should have thrown in something like dessert for free after making us wait such a long time.
If you go to Pai you will not be disappointed and I do need to go back and try their versions of some of my favourites.
At this point I still might be partial to Sukho Thai which provides more value or Koh San Road, where I was introduced to some of my favourites in the first place. I will update this post the next time I go back to Pai.