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| - Since this place is just six blocks uphill from my doorstep, I was guardedly optimistic at the prospect of a new Thai restaurant so close to home. As soon as the "Coming Soon" sign went up, my conscience told me to warn the guy that this location has been an amazing carousel of failed bar businesses over the years but my selfish, ingrained lust for some possibly good Thai nearby won out over a warning.
Rather unfortunately nestled against an aged Aamco transmission shop, the forced symbiosis works only in respect to additional (shared?) parking for the restaurant. Anyway,no one with a wrench ran me off.
Pete has doled out a pocketful of sheckels for new paint and coatings, outside and in, done up in Thai Royal colors. Check out the purple epoxy floor with embedded multi-hued glitter. Sounds tacky but I like it.
White linen tablecloths with fancy-fold cloth napkins up the ante a bit but some glaring oversights de-value the overall effect. Elegance conceived, but not quite realized; like waking just before the happy end of an excellent dream.
Make the effort to find the tiny, wildly inappropriate, but hilarious picture on the otherwise generic photo menu.
Entering through a tiny foyer, you come to a reverse J shaped bar that remains with the ghosts of tenants past, and is where I perch to place my order to go, with the dining room to the left. Sadly, the slippage in ambience starts right here.
Three visits have confirmed this area as the ubiquitous catch-all for the random junk so many Asian places feel are okay to display. At 5 P.M. on a Sunday, with two couples dining, this end of the bar was littered with a set of keys, a couple packs of Marlboro Lights, chewed ballpoint pens, battered reading glasses, and dirty, bussed dishes that ALMOST made it back to the kitchen, literally two steps away. Iced water served with a lime slice merely blunted the edge of the less than desirable impression. An uninspired portable buffet set against old wood wainscoting in the main room add nothing to the look.
Depending where you sit in the dining room, you can have either a pleasant, almost oasis-like view of an undevoloped natural hillside that feels like you're far out in the desert, OR you may look out the North facing windows at old asphalt and the harsh, grimy whiteness of A-A-mco. Dude-- How about a couple of window blinds here?
Entree to go #1 Red Curry Duck w/ Pineapple $12.95
Humungeous amount of decent roast duck in a full quart container. (unusually good value) Canned pineapple. (this about sets the bar for all that follows.)
Red Curry infused with (ruined by) the most pungent and funky fish sauce I've had anywhere. "Authentic"?- no doubt, but nothing at all like the light, tasty version the Vietnamese do. Uh..fish sauce with duck. Really?
Entree to go #2 Pad Thai Noodles $9.95
Humungeous amount of noodles sauced in a sweetened vinegar based thing reminiscent of German potato salad. Just okay. Sauce was skimpy which produced a giant clump.
3 or 4 large butterfied shrimp. Great value.
Many large pieces of boiled chicken breast. Absolutely white and seemingly impervious to the sauce. Needed serious home doctoring. Completely unincorporated in the dish and seemed to be tossed in as an afterthought. Totally weird.
Green onion garnish tasted STRONGLY of refrigerator.
Entree to go #3 Pork w/ Garlic Sauce $9.95
Serving size: 3/4 quart--sort of like ice cream that isn't a half gallon aymore; or did the cook just miss the ingredient mark by 25%?
Mostly boiled pork in a truly insipid sauce of soy, water, garlic and oil. The pork (just like the naked chicken preceeding it) was so unrelentingly bland that I left it in the fridge for two days hoping it would absorb some flavor. Too bad all it soaked up was the sodium from the soy sauce. Now, instead of merely pale pork, I ended up with a pile of over salted pig meat in the lamest excuse for garlic sauce I've ever had.
I so wanted this to be a great place but the complete lack of even a basic knowledge of how to prepare decent ingredients into a cohesive and palatable dish has completely escaped this kitchen staff three times running, and on my dime.
Where are the vibrant, complex, and exciting flavors that well executed Thai food can deliver like no other?
And, speaking of "executed" I have a suggestion to Pete in regard to the cook...
Really, Yelpers-- 4 and 5 star reviews? "Top 100" something or other?
We CANNOT have been in the same place! I personally like Pete and wish him well, but his apparent philosophy of Quantity over Quality just doesn't make the food taste any better. And although I DO NOT prefer corporate enterprise,fuck it, I'm going to Pei Wei..
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