Time for THAI! Yeup, I finally convinced Grayson to go for Thai with me at Chad Thai. When we walked in Chad Thai, it was quite full already, but luckily there was one more table available for us. The service at Chad Thai was quite attentive. Perhaps overly attentive at times because we felt rushed to finish our dinner.
Anyways, on to the food now. We decided to each pick a dish and then choose one to share so that we could try a few things. Being ever so thoughtful, Grayson chose a vegetarian dish for our sharing plate.
Pad Pak Ruam
I chose the Pad Pak Ruam ($9.99) for us instead. It was a vegetable stir fry of baby corn, carrots, bell peppers, green beans, and button mushrooms with oyster sauce. I liked that it wasn’t overly oily when stir fried and the vegetables weren’t over cooked so they still had a bite to them as well.
Tom yum noodle with tofu
It was rice noodles in tom yum soup with button mushrooms, lemongrass, red onions, lime leaves and galangal. I thought that the tofu would be firm tofu instead of fried tofu puffs!
The soup wasn’t like any of the tom yum I’ve had before, because it was made creamy with coconut milk, which added a nutty aspect to the soup. The lemongrass was noticeable in the broth as well, making it amazingly fragrant. I ordered it with medium spiciness, and it wasn’t unbearably hot (least not for me). I liked that even with the spice, I could still taste the flavor of the soup through the heat.
Gai Yan
Grayson ordered the Gai Yan ($8.99), which was grilled chicken with herbs and spices with a sweet chili sauce. He also ordered a “small” bowl of coconut rice ($3.00) to go with it. I phrase it as “small” because it was a pretty big bowl of rice to be considered small. It was probably the same amount as 1.5 – 2 normal rice bowls of rice.
I’ve never had coconut rice before so I tried some of his. The rice was amazingly aromatic and it was coconut-y sweet. It was just lovely. Grayson thought the chicken was really fragrant in it’s use of herbs, and almost reminded him of Vietnamese lemon grass chicken.
Service
We were a little disappointed with the timing of when the food came to the table though. I received my noodle soup first, then the vegetable stir fry came along with the coconut rice, and last came the grilled chicken. The problem with this was, Grayson’s grilled chicken arrived at our table 30 minutes AFTER I received my noodle soup.
So, by that time my rice noodles soaked up most of the soup and started to become soggy. Grayson’s rice also got cold during the waiting process because he was waiting to eat it with the chicken and vegetable stir fry.
Here’s my thoughts on my lunch visit just a week after!
Lunch menu
The first thing I noticed was how they had a separate menu for lunch, one that had way more pictures! Having the pictures made ordering a lot easier because I already knew what to expect out of the dish beforehand. The other difference that I noticed was that the lunch meals came with a soup and an appetizer.
The crispy wontons came with a sweet chili sauce it came with though, and it had the perfect balance of spicy and sweet. The soup had shiitake mushrooms, diced carrots and I think jicama? I thought the soup had a clean broth-like taste to it, and I found it to be quite an enjoyable opener to my meal ahead.
Sukho Thai noodle
This was a thin rice noodle in spicy stock, chicken, bean sprouts, green beans, green onions, ground chili, and coriander. Oh, it was also supposed to come with a crispy wonton skin and peanuts on top but I told the server that I didn’t want them in my noodles. After she put the order in, she so kindly came back over to our table and made sure to ask me whether I just didn’t like peanuts or if I was allergic to them. I thought that small gesture was just ever so thoughtful.
The chicken was a little on the dry side so that was a little disappointing. Except none of that is important because the broth, was so amazingly good. I actually liked it better than the tom yum, which is really is something because I do love my tom yum soup. There was a a bit of acidity, the perfect amount of spice to have the broth shine through, it was just so simply delicious.