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| - I'm surprised that nobody has given this restaurant the review that it really deserves.
There used to be a restaurant here called Mint Cafe. Mint Cafe served better Thai food than that place on Lee, better than the Map of Thailand in Chinatown, and far better than its neighbor Tree Country. I thought the food was even better than some of the places I've been in Boston and NYC. I was a regular, and carried out every other week. I always got the Tamarind Duck and the Golden Bags. My girlfriend always either got the Pad Thai or the Mint Cafe Fried Rice.
Then, Mint cafe closed down and was replaced by High Thai'd. At first, it seemed exactly the same as Mint Cafe. The decor was similar, some of the staff was the same, the menu was the same (except for a few places where "Mint Cafe" was replaced with "High Thai'd" - i.e., "High Thai'd" fried rice, etc). But then I tried the food. Here is what happened to my favorite dishes:
- The Golden Bags are little fried meat/vegetable dumplings with scallion twist ties. The first thing I noticed was that they seemed larger than before. That would be good, except I also realized that they had changed the filling to a largely vegetable filling (to save money?). They were also sloppily made and oily and left a bad taste in my mouth.
- The Tamarind Duck had different vegetables from before (more carrots, peppers) and was completely covered in ginger, which overwhelmed the dish and made it taste pretty awful.
- The Pad Thai was quite mushy
- The High Thai'd fried rice was okay.
The service is still quite good, like before. But we no longer order here because, unfortunately, the food has clearly gone downhill. For Thai food, we drive half an hour to Pepper Pike, to a restaurant called Peppermint. It's the sister restaurant of Mint Cafe.
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