DINE OUT REVIEWS: Pad Thai
my first visit to Pad Thai was on a cold and gray Sunday afternoon last March, with my partner and a friend visiting from Toronto. The restaurant was nearly empty; Mozart was playing on the sound system and we sat in a corner booth and ordered food to combat the chill.
To start, there was tom yum goong—hot-and-sour soup the colour of apricots, with coconut milk, shrimp and tiny mushrooms, $6.95. We had salad rolls filled with barbecued tofu and fresh herbs, with a house lemon dressing and peanuts, $11, and a pot of lemongrass tea, $3.50. Then we shared an order of drunken prawns, stir-fried with eggplant and topped with crispy basil, $21, and because my partner had little experience with Thai food (code for “will this be too spicy?”) a plate of pineapple chicken fried rice with curry and cashews, $14.25.
“I can’t remember when I’ve had such good Thai food, and certainly not in Toronto,” said my friend from the Big Smoke, who spent lots of time in Thailand in her younger days.
A month later, we returned for dinner, with a more adventurous friend. My companion ordered the yellow curry with potatoes and pineapples, $15.95. I went for the vegetarian Pad Thai. Hands down, it was the best Pad Thai I’d ever had.
A few weeks later, my friend Rachel mentioned she loved tom yum soup. I suggested we meet at Pad Thai on a Friday evening. There were four of us, so an order of signature shrimp rolls, with wraps made of seaweed and a sweet-chili-cucumber sauce, $14.50, was perfect to share as there are eight per order. We also shared another Pad Thai, as well as a green and a massaman curry, both $15.95. Of course, there was also the soup. It’s made “Royal” style at Pad Thai, with a coconut-milk base.
On that visit, there were a few hiccups. Our food arrived 10 minutes before the rice (the cooker was on the fritz), and our booth was by the door, which meant a steady stream of people coming in for pick-up or waiting for a free table. (If making reservations I’d ask for a booth near the back.) But the food is so good and the service so friendly that we didn’t care.
In fact, he who knew little about Thai cuisine, now wants to eat at Pad Thai at least once a week. Thus we returned over the Victoria Day weekend. Forget pineapple chicken fried rice; he now wants something new each time. We started with crispy wontons, $7.50, that are nothing like the puffed-up wontons in Chinese restaurants. These are flattened triangles filled with delicately spiced ground pork and shrimp and come with a shredded green-apple-andred-onion salsa, the perfect blend of sweet and acidic. Continuing the Babe theme, we had the ginger pork, with fresh ginger and vegetables in bean sauce, $15.25, and the Panang curry with peppers and peanuts on a bed of spinach, $15.95.
We end our meals at Pad Thai with a sublime scoop of coconut ice cream, $3, though once, feeling adventurous, we ordered the banana flambé, $7. The Cointreau was poured over the bananas and lit on fire at the table by our waitress, who volunteered that “it’s always a bit like performing magic” before dousing the flame with coconut cream. We’d say the same about the food at Pad Thai.