| rev:text
| - As the name suggests, this is not a place that screams nice sit down meal to impress a date located in a run down strip mall on Desert Inn Road, but your aforementioned date would be indubitably impressed if you brought their food over to her place and curled up to watch a nice romantic movie such as Thai-tanic or any within the Thai-light Saga if she happens to be a fan of Thai-lor Larb-ner (my apologies for the pad thai puns, alas it couldn't be helped).
While Archie's and Pin Kao are familiar Thai lunch staples to the Vegas locals, this hidden gem on the east side of town excels in value and authenticity. To start off, you automatically knock off a few bucks simply by checking in on Yelp and receiving a complementary Thai iced tea, an always refreshingly cool, creamy, and sweet beverage to neutralize even the spiciest of meals. One then has the options for the $5.95 lunch specials which include choice of main entree, soup of the day, steamed or fried rice, and veggie egg roll or chicken pot sticker. The standout option is the green curry. They are not shy on spice, so my advice would be to order at about 5-6 if you like spicy, and titrate upward with the dry chili flakes at your table since that is essentially what they add to increase the spice level. My experience with 7 or higher is that the spice overpowers the other flavors and it is not a pleasant experience, especially if you are ordering noodles or fried rice since you can at least extinguish some heat from the curries with steamed rice.
Whereas Pin Kao is heavy handed with the coconut milk and Archie's can be a tad on the oily side, the curries here are remarkably balanced and packed with vibrant and distinct flavors from the herbs and spices. All the meats and vegetables components are fresh and well-cooked with toothsome textures. A few items I've tried off the beaten path include the spicy crab noodle (think vinegary pad thai with bits of spicy crab), thai bbq chicken served with a side of papaya salad and sticky rice (aptly named "the three buddies", there's probably a food porn joke somewhere in here involving the words threesome and sticky, but I will keep this review PG), and the crispy fried pork (good flavors but way too salty). The noodle soups are unmemorable and the one dish to avoid at all costs is the mee krob. I've been wanting to try a solid rendition of mee krob (roughly translates to "crispy noodles") which is akin to hong kong style pan-fried noodles topped with a meat/vegetable starchy gravy but having a sweet acidic component and using rice noodles instead of egg noodles, yet the rendition here uses cheap chow mein noodles and drowned with a msg-laden sauce that reminds me of a premium bowl of cup-o-ramen. I'm going to pretend this dish never happened. Based on other yelper's photos, the whole fried tilapia topped with a spicy mango relish and the mango sticky rice look pretty legit so they are on the agenda for future visits. All in all, a solid local mom/pop Thai joint that is easy on the wallet, loaded with authentic flavors, and hits the spot if you are looking for a quick bite or as a solid take out option on the east side of town.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)