Thai a ribbon around delicious St. Vital gift

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/09/2009 (6203 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘So, what do you think?,” I asked my Asian maven, who was visiting from his home in Thailand, and with whom I had shared the many dishes that covered our table.

And his answer was yes, the food was the real deal, that it had the textural contrasts, the clean, fresh flavours and the vibrant combinations of spices that typify genuine Thai cooking.

Siam may or may not be, as some of its fans claim, the only authentic Thai restaurant in the city, but it is certainly one of them.

Since my last visit several years ago, it has moved a few doors down from its former premises into this roomier, sleeker and more modern space, with a number of attractive Thai objects on the walls, including the inevitable royal portrait. I had come back, not just to get the maven’s opinion, but also to indulge in one of my own favourite Thai dishes — one that I have trouble finding anywhere else.

Mee krob, it’s called, and there are two kinds, including the one I end up with more often than not, and which, I suppose, has its own attractions, but which I find boring — pan-fried egg noodles garnished with big chunks of veggies and an often nondescript sauce. No, the one I love is listed on this menu as mee krob Thai-style, (No. 28), a bright orange and gloriously crunchy tangle of deep-fried rice vermicelli — almost candied but miraculously not in the least cloying, with shrimp, in our case, for $12.99 ($10.99 with choice of meat).

It’s great as an appetizer, and there are other good starters as well. The chicken satays, for instance, four skewers of moist, flavourful chicken breast, with an elegantly lighter-than-usual peanut sauce for dipping ($7.99). Or the clear, sweet-and-sour tom yum soup with shrimp and mushrooms, fragrant with galangal and lemongrass ($8.50 small), or the lip-tingling green papaya salad — blazing with chili, tangy with lime juice, and slightly salty from dried shrimp paste, but tempered by a sweet touch of palm sugar ($6.99). The kitchen pulls no punches in the dishes that are meant to be incendiary. On the other hand they’ll turn down the heat if you ask them to.

All the curry sauces I sampled were wonderful, simultaneously full-flavoured yet delicate, and notably non-gloppy. I was impressed by the peanut-infused beef and potato matsuman curry, a dish that seems to be kitchen-proof everywhere — I’ve rarely found one that I haven’t liked, but most have been denser and darker, tasting almost more Indian than Thai, and Siam’s marvellous version was lighter and more delicate than usual ($10.99).

There was no complimentary rice, but our à la carte fried rice with crabmeat was good ($12.99).

Authenticity doesn’t necessarily mean perfection, and there were a few disappointments, some of them more major than others, and some of them due to skimping on certain ingredients. The smooth coconut milk-based red sauce for the roasted duck curry, for instance, was so luscious we could have lapped it all up even without the duck. Which, come to think of, is pretty much what we did since there were surprisingly few slices of the duck, and those few almost entirely of inedible fat. Making it very expensive fat at $13.50.

The minced pork in a lettuce wrap was also very good — coarsely chopped meat mixed with ground toasted rice, laced with lime juice, and packing a seriously spicy punch of chili — but it came in an astonishingly wee portion, not more than a few tablespoons, and we kept poking around to see if there was more of it hidden under the lettuce leaves ($7.50). A more serious lapse — not in generosity, this time, but in execution — was the pad prig khing, i.e. stir-fried slices of pork with green beans, which tasted more Chinese than Thai. Or would have, if there had been any flavour at all.

A few dishes are listed separately, under Chef’s Specials, among them grilled shrimp and crabmeat in seafood curry wrap — not a helpful description, as it happens, since the wrap turns out to be a banana leaf ($12.99). The dish was faultlessly prepared (according to my maven) and good, although one does have to like the pronounced flavour of dried shrimp.

The menu runs to several pages, and inevitably I missed some dishes that I would have liked to try, among them a grilled prawn salad, Thai stuffed chicken wings, stir fried eggplant with Thai basil, and the creamy chicken galangal soup. I missed some others because I somehow overlooked an entire section of the menu on which they appear, a section that lists combinations and one-plate dinners.

My own fault, obviously, but I did notice the Thai style barbecued ribs, and would certainly have ordered them if our waitress hadn’t told us they were available only as part of a combo — I later found them listed on their own on the take-out menu ($13.99). Other intriguing items in that section included pan-fried halibut steak with spicy fried rice, curry sauce and green beans ($11.99) and a Thai omelette with chicken, pork ($9.99) or shrimp ($12.50).

Apart from that one lapse, the service was pleasant and efficient. Note, also: according to the menu, the kitchen uses no MSG.

marion.warhaft@freepress.mb.ca