Aree Thai

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)