thai Archives - Curiously Carmen

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!

Sawasdee Thai

February 10, 2014

Hi everyone!

Thai cuisine always seems to be lacking in popularity, especially in Vancouver. Indeed, there are just as delicious Thai restaurants as there are with other Asian cuisines, but for some reason, I never really hear anyone talk about going to Thai food, which really is a shame!

We came across Sawasdee Thai on Urbanspoon and we were sold immediately due to its high rating and convenient location. So off we went!

Sawasdee Thai is located on Main Street. We decided to go a bit later, just because we thought it would be super busy on a Friday night and didn’t want to wait in line there. The restaurant really stands out from the rest of the restaurants on the block.

When we got there at 8:30pm, we expected it to be quiet and were worried that it was even closed! We went in and were taken by surprise by the fact that the restaurant was completely full, with 2 parties of 4 still waiting to eat! The host asked us if we had a reservation which we didn’t, and I was worried we wouldn’t get a table. However, after 5 minutes, another lady sat us down. Yay!

The door is completely filled with awards which we took as a great and welcoming sign. We sat down, and impressed at how fast the servers were with getting our water and menu despite it being super busy in there.

When we were ready to order, the sever was quick to come to our aid. I really appreciated this because often, when you go to restaurants, servers ignore you when they’re busy, but these guys were really nice and efficient.

Our food came really fast, which was pleasantly surprising. For our appetizer, we ordered Stuffed Chicken Wings ($8.95). We ordered this because it sounded interesting – “de-boned chicken wings stuffed with bean thread noodles, mushroom, and carrot”. I wondered how a stuffed chicken wing would taste….

I instantly fell in love with the flavour of the chicken wings. The noodles were what made this dish stand out, otherwise it would have tasted like normal chicken wings.

The spices in the noodles were really good. I liked how they were generous with the noodles, but not so much that it ruins the actual chicken itself (see picture on the right-bottom is the chicken, clear stuff on top are the noodles/carrots/etc).

The sauce was also light and mild, which is good for an appetizer. It also tasted super fresh!

Next up, was our green coconut curry with chicken (12.95). We ordered a side of coconut rice since it does not come with any sides. There was an abundance of wonderful exotic Thai spices mixed intricately with rich, creamy, coconut milk and chicken breasts.

I loved that it was equal parts spicy, yet creamy, rich, and sweet at the same time. They also give you a LOT of quality, white meat chicken in the curry as well. With every spoonful of goodness you scoop, comes at least 3 pieces of chicken on your small spoon, until the very end of the dish (usually the first couple of spoonfuls the chicken would be gone).

The bamboo shoots that came with the dish were also really soft and sweet. The basil leaf that came on top of the dish was also a really nice addition and detail to our curry. The side of coconut rice (2.95) was also steamed perfectly, and had a generous amount of coconut milk with it.

Our final dish was their pad thai with tamarind sauce (11.95). I am not a big fan of pad thai to be honest, but I thought it tasted pretty good. The flavours were really accentuated and lively, you could really taste the tamarind sauce. There was also a generous portion of prawns that came with the dish. I was really hoping to try dessert but there was no way I could have eaten more there!

Conclusion: Overall, we had an excellent experience at Sawasdee Thai. The staff was very accommodating and managed to fit us in even though the restaurant was packed and we had no reservation. Service was friendly, quick, and efficient. I would highly recommend coming here as long as you make a reservation.

What are some delicious Thai places that you’ve been to in the Lower Mainland? Any thoughts? Let me know!

-Carmen