thai Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Curiously Carmen

Bai Bua Thai Cuisine (Two Visits)

February 8, 2017

While looking for dinner options for our girls reunion, Cinnamon suggested Bai Bua. She had raved about it before and I’ve heard great things from other people as well! I am really glad we ended up coming here.

This post is a combination of two visits!
Bai Bua is conveniently located in East Van, by Hastings and Nanaimo. Within a couple of blocks, you are in foodie heaven… Tacofino, Red Wagon, East Cafe, Platform 7, Aer Cafe, Sushi Nanaimo… and of course, Bai Bua!

We weren’t sure how busy it was going to be, so I called in to make a reservation for four a few days prior.

Throughout the night, it was pretty quiet, which was good because we had brought our belated Christmas presents to exchange after dinner. Throughout the night, service was pretty decent although there was confusion around them forgetting one of our dishes.

Walking in, I really liked the decor of the restaurant. It felt very cozy and warm, with some hand painted artwork on the walls.
Tom yum noodle soup, $10.90: Cinnamon had been here a couple times before, and said the tom yum noodle soup was pretty good. Despite not being allowed to eat spicy food, she decided to break the rule that night because this soup was just THAT good! It packed a good amount of spice and was a generous portion.
Curry noodle, $11.90: It took us awhile to order because I was having a hard time choosing what to get. Everything sounded so good! In the end, Sangria was nice enough to offer splitting two dishes! The first dish we ordered was the curry noodle. Sangria had also been here before, and really loved these noodles.

All of their curries are made in coconut milk, meaning that it was safe for me to eat! The curry noodles were nice and creamy with a rich broth, and a good amount of spice. There was a combination of both the pad thai noodles and fried egg noodles (I think that’s what it was?). The protein in the curry noodles was chicken breast, which there was a good amount of.
Roasted duck red curry, $12.90: Originally, Sangria and I had ordered green curry. But after placing the order, we saw the roasted duck special listed on their chalkboard and both wanted that instead! Then, Cocoa read the menu as well and decided that SHE also wanted to change her pad thai to the roasted duck red curry as well.

We were really glad we changed it, because this was aammaazziinngg! The roasted duck was very tender, juicy and flavourful. There was quite a bit of roasted duck in there as every spoonful was met with pieces of duck meat. As for the curry, it was sweeter due to the cane sugar and pineapples. I wish that this was a permanent item, but all the more reason to come back again before February ends!

Cocoa isn’t much of a spice person, but she enjoyed this because it was more on the sweet side with only a hint of spice. I brought the leftovers back and the boyfriend scoffed at me for ordering red curry instead of green curry (because green curry is better), but quickly changed his mind once I heated it up for him with the coconut rice.

Tom Yum Noodle Soup, $10.90: The next week, I took the boyfriend here! We were both wanting to try the tom yum soup, so why not get some noodles with it too? I’m glad I double checked with the server because although it didn’t sound like it, this dish contained both coconut milk and regular milk.

This was my least favourite dish so far. Although I liked how it was spicy and sour, I wasn’t a big fan of the herbs they used in the soup- there’s a spice that I don’t like in Thai food, but I can’t put my finger on which one exactly it is… Maybe since we couldn’t have the regular milk inside, that made the taste of the herbs a bit stronger? However, the boyfriend enjoyed the dish and happily ate the rest of it.

I was also unlucky and ate a big chunk of dried, chewy lemongrass. I also didn’t really like the texture of the noodles either. Oh yeah, and the beef was dry and rough.
Green curry, $11.90: On my first visit I tried the red curry, this time it was the green curry! The green curry wasn’t as spicy and more on the sweet side. As with the red curry, the green curry was rich and creamy from the coconut milk. The chicken was moist and juicy, with a good amount of veggies inside.

Coconut rice large, $5.00: A Thai dinner isn’t complete without coconut rice! Their coconut rice is so good. It has a strong coconut flavour and is slightly sweet. Any curry and their coconut rice is the perfect marriage!

I recommend getting the large for two people, as you can pack it up with the remainder of the curry sauce and eat it for lunch the next day, as I did 😉

Phew! Such a long post… but for good reason! I definitely see myself coming back here in the future and I’m glad Cinnamon suggested this place!

Yay!

Longtail Kitchen – Modern take on Thai street food

May 8, 2015

Hi everyone!

I’ve been hearing many great things about Longtail Kitchen on social media, and decided that it was finally time for me to try it out.

Longtail Kitchen is a sister restaurant of the very popular and successful Thai restaurant, Maenam. I actually didn’t know that Longtail was a Thai inspired eatery until reading the reviews and their website!

Longtail is located inside the River Market at New Westminster Quay. I haven’t been to New West for awhile, and don’t remember seeing this building the last time I was here… but basically, the bottom floor is like an upscale food court. You won’t find any greasy, old looking stands here (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) but instead more local and new eateries.
At Longtail, you order and pay at the front, then the staff will bring your food to you. This was our first meal of the day at around 3pm, so we were pretty hungry! We sat at a table right next to the window wall (? Is there a specific term for these??) which I’m pretty sure they open up so people are able to sit outside in the summer.

You are able to see a bit of the Fraser River and the boardwalk, but unfortunately I was too short and my eye level hit right where the white window pane was and couldn’t see anything. =( You can see the picture above to understand what I mean.
The boyfriend ordered the green curry with chicken. When it arrived, we could smell the delicacy and aroma of all the spices that went into this dish. The green curry had a strong, rich coconut taste to it. The chicken was very tender and juicy as well. It came with a rice bowl side, we were hoping that it would be coconut rice but sadly it was just plain rice.

For myself, I ordered ‘Mama Cheung’s laksa’, which I don’t see on the menu anymore, so I guess they rotate their menu frequently to ensure freshness of all the food items! The laksa came with a seafood curry broth, chicken, fish cakes, prawns, veggies, and noodles.

I was expecting the curry to have a fishy taste to it due to the seafood broth, but it was very mild. Again, the curry was rich and spicy. The prawns were big and juicy, and had a nice snap to it- a sign of freshness. I saved the tofu puffs for the end so that they would be saturated with the curry! Everything tasted extremely fresh and made with great quality.

The laksa soup was so good that I drank all of it, I wasn’t even thirsty afterwards! That is a wonderful sign and says a lot about how it was prepared 😉
Another cool thing to add about Longtail is that they also offer some Thai cooking products to bring home! We spent some time looking at what they sold, as we haven’t heard of some of these products before.

Needless to say, we found ourselves savouring every single bite and were glad that we made the trek out here! One thing to add though, was that the portions were a bit smaller than what we were used to. But it is understandable, they use quality and fresh ingredients and the prices aren’t bad for how delicious everything was.

Which would you rather order – chicken curry or laksa soup?

Thanks for reading!
-Carmen

{Food Truck Compilation} JJ’s Trucketeria, Guanaco, and Super Thai

February 3, 2015

Food truck invasion! I decided to compile these 3 food trucks into one post as they seemed like it would be three very short posts on their own. These places are a compilation of two visits with coworkers during the Street Food City festival, which was part of DOVF. But, most of these you can have without Dine Out Vancouver. I should have included Vij’s food truck in here as well, oops!

Guanaco is a Salvadorean cuisine food truck, I think it is the only one of its kind in Vancouver but correct me if I’m wrong. I wanted to take a walk around the food truck festival and my coworker decided to come with me as well!

I had already eaten, but I was in the mood for a small snack which is why I settled on this place. My first choice was The Reef food truck, but their Jamaican patties looked kinda gross in the warmer so after walking around three times, I decided to just come here. Ugh indecisiveness.

I ordered two of their snack sized tacos, chicken and chorizo. I felt like a small snack, and felt that $5 would be a reasonable price.

The chicken was tender, while all the vegetables were fresh and crunchy. I liked the addition of fresh onions and loads of cilantro! The taco shell was soft and doughy, with a bit extra powder.

DSC04610-300x168 — Photo credit: Blast Media

Super Thai: On that same day, my coworker ordered the chicken pad thai from Super Thai. I didn’t try any, but she was happy to offer her opinion on it.

She liked how it was warm and comforting on a cloudy day, and said it was pretty flavourful and not watery like other pad thai that she’s had.

However, near the end, a lot of the noodles started to annoyingly stick to the bottom of the take out box, and took too much effort to un-stick. Perhaps it’s the texture of the noodles that makes it do that.

She also thought it wasn’t worth the price she paid. I also think it’s worth nothing that they were sold out on half their menu items by 2 pm that day. I wanted to order the coconut curry rice but there was none left! =(

JJs-Trucketeria-1 — Picture from Follow Me Foodie

JJ’s Trucketeria: While I went to Vij’s, two of my coworkers ordered from JJ’s instead. Funny story, none of us actually knew the name of this place. I didn’t take a close look at the place, and my coworkers didn’t see a name on the truck.. so we just referred to it as the yellow food truck.

I’m not even sure how we figured out the name, LOL! As you can see from the picture, half the name is on the covering which you’re not able to see unless you’re far away, while the other part is covered with their menu.

Flipino BBQ pork, fried egg, and garlic rice. My coworkers were nice enough to share with me as the portion was too big for just one person. The meat was very tender and well seasoned, while the fried egg was cooked perfect and oozed onto the garlic rice.

My favourite part of this was the garlic rice! Although I only had a few bites, I loved the slight garlic flavour. This is perfect Asian comfort food on a rainy day.

Although, I would recommend having gum or mints handy due to the garlic rice.

That sums up my food truck adventures last month, including Vij’s Railway Express!

What are the names of your favourite food trucks? Better question, what is your opinion on food trucks- love ’em, or prefer a traditional sit down meal?

Thanks for reading!
-Carmen

Aree Thai

May 31, 2014

After spending the lovely afternoon in Steveston, and having fish and chips at Sockeye City Grill, the boyfriend and I came back to Vancouver for a hearty Thai dinner. We went to Aree Thai last year, and liked our experience so we decided to come back.
Since we have been here before, we remembered which dishes we enjoyed, and the ones that we didn’t. When we came here last year, we remembered that we didn’t like the spring rolls and avoided them this time around.
For starters, we ordered the tom kha soup, with chicken (small- $4.95). For most of their dishes, the server will ask you what level of spiciness you’d like. We decided to go with a medium level. Tom kha is made with a coconut broth, flavoured with mushrooms, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and galangal. The coconut broth was very evident and gave the soup a sweet taste with a creamier texture.

We enjoyed the soup but found it to be very spicy. Normally, we love our spicy foods and have a high tolerance, but if we had one more spoonful of this soup, we would have had to soak our mouths with milk. I’m not sure if the kitchen accidentally made our soup super spicy, because it was definitely not medium spice. I would order this again due to the variety of flavours, but with less spice.

Next up was the yellow curry in rice noodle, with our choice of beef ($9,95). I wasn’t a big fan of this dish because I found the rice noodles were a softer, soggier texture than I was used to.

Also, there was a strong lime flavour to the curry which was overpowering for me. However, the boyfriend really liked this dish so it really just depends on your own personal preference! The beef was tender, and the onions were a great addition as well.
The last two dishes we ordered was green curry and coconut rice. We ordered the green curry previously, and loved it. This time was no different. Like the soup, there was a strong coconut taste to the curry, and made it a bit sweet. We ordered it to be medium spicy, which it was, unlike our fire scorching, tear inducing, flaming chili bowl of soup LOL. There was a decent amount of good quality white meat chicken, with no fat or tendon on it which I loved. As for the coconut rice, it was very delicious and moist. Eating the two together is a perfect combination!

All in all, we enjoyed our second visit to Aree Thai. There was only one server, but she was doing her best to serve the other four tables that were there. Nothing much to complain about, if you are wanting a low-key, easy going dinner, then Aree Thai is a good place to go.

Pros:

Delicious, aromatic food
Fast and nice service
Not too long of a wait due to lots of seating space
Clean and simple interior with some Thai sculptures
Free street parking

Cons:

Spice level on their menu is not always accurate, or the same for all dishes (ordered medium spicy for both dishes, but the soup was suuuuuppeeerrrr spicy)

Chad Thai Restaurant Review

February 20, 2014

Hi readers!

I have heard many great things about this place from my friend, and the perfect opportunity came to finally try it out when one of my best childhood friends came back into town this week. I feel like since it’s such a small place, it often gets overlooked by all the other surrounding restaurants in the neighbourhood. It also has really high ratings on Urbanspoon, which I never knew!

This was the Chad Thai Garden dish. It consists of a fresh rice roll stuffed with vegetarian delights such as tofu, mushroom, carrot, and served with spicy dipping sauce. At first bite, I fell in love with the flavour of this dish. The spicy dipping sauce really highlighted and complimented the flavours well.

The part I loved most though, was the BASIL! The basil was what really made this dish stand out as it kind with its minty flavour, giving this dish a good PoP! The only thing I didn’t like was the way that it was prepared.

The rice wrap was wrapped pretty loosely, and the three of us had a hard time eating this without the wrap breaking and having the contents go on all over our plates.

The second thing we ordered was the Gai Yang. Gai yang is a type of Thai grilled chicken which is marinated in Thai herbs and spices. We picked the sweet chili sauce for the dip, instead of the peanut sauce.

I enjoyed this dish as well. It tasted really similar to lemon grass chicken to me. I would probably have preferred white meat over dark, since it was a bit fatty but overall not bad!
The last thing we ordered was the Yen Ta Fo. This is a thin rice noodle in piquant sweet and sour stock with fermented tofu, calamari, fish balls, prawns, and crisp wonton topping. I found this dish to be definitely more sweet than sour, I wish that it was more balanced.

We also ordered the soup to be medium spice, but we all agreed that it wasn’t really that spicy. It came with a good portion of seafood which I enjoyed. I probably wouldn’t order this dish again because the soup was too sweet for my liking.

Overall, the food at Chad Thai was pretty decent. I wish we ordered more food so I could give a better review, but we weren’t feeling that hungry! The servers were all really friendly and attentive, coming to fill our water constantly and asked us how everything was. Small things like this really are appreciated and come noticed!

At the end of your meal, they give you complimentary Thai candy which was really good- it was a bit sour, kind of like the Chinese dried salted prune candies. I would probably come here again sometime, and try more of their other dishes!