Thai Cuisine

Since I had never eaten Thai food, I decided to go to Thai Cuisine on Drake Road near Smoothie King and Colonial Kitchen. The restaurant is close to my home in the Westwood neighborhood.

I was able to talk my boyfriend into going to the restaurant with me. He is a very picky eater and has had very little experience with trying ethnic food. The restaurant is small. There are 20-30 tables inside and set up pretty close to one another. We walked in and didn't know exactly what to do. Should we seat ourselves? Should we wait for a server to seat us? I saw a young man holding a pitcher of water near a table and assumed he must be a server. He made eye contact with us, then continued talking to his table. I assumed that meant he wouldn't be helping us, so we sat ourselves at a table near the door.

The room was decorated with red and gold wall paper featuring some kind of goddess. There were gold fixtures and décor all around, but only a few things hanging on the walls. A china cabinet containing small gold figures stood in the corner and two large gold dragon-like figures sat near the door. Another large gold dragon was near the cash register. A very large gold sunburst-looking piece of art was an eye-catcher.

After a couple of minutes, the young man approached us and asked quietly what we'd like to drink and handed us menus. He brought back our lukewarm waters, no ice, with a small slice of lemon. We hadn't asked for water without ice or with lemon, but that's what was served to us. I was confused why the water wasn't very cold and didn't have ice, but I didn't ask. The menu was very straight forward. There were a few special items listed but most of the menu seemed to be a "create your own" style dish. It said: "Choose your protein" with chicken, beef, pork, tofu or veggies as the options, and then the noodle/rice options were listed underneath.

The young man walked in and out of a door leading to the kitchen, and a young (seemingly Caucasian) girl finally came to our table and said she was our server. She asked if we needed more time and I told her about my project. She suggested I get the Bangkok fried rice, "It's the most basic," she explained. But I wanted something a little more ethnic. My boyfriend exclaimed that he wanted the Bangkok fried rice and I decided on Lad Na with chicken.

Lad Na with Chicken

It was a dish with wide noodles, snap peas, carrots, onion, and chicken sautéed in a light brown garlic sauce. The server asked how spicy I wanted it and she suggested "medium" would be good if I like spicy food. I do, so I agreed to medium. My boyfriend ordered his rice extra spicy. I was scared for him.

The food came out less than 10 minutes later. It looked and smelled delicious. There was a lot of the liquid sauce on my dish so it was hard to scoop up the noodles. The food was spicy! It left my lips and tongue burning. My boyfriend said his was "dragon spitting fire" hot, but I couldn't try it since he got his with beef. Even though the food was spicy, we both really liked it. The server came back to check on us and she was glad that we liked our food. I asked her about the spiciness and she explained that it was dried, ground chili peppers that made it so hot. She said a lot of Thai food is spicy. She didn't seem to have time to talk so I didn't ask her any more questions.

The meal was good and the experience was new and exciting. I'm glad we went there and we both decided that we would go back again. After leaving, we went to get ice cream to cool off our mouths. It was a great date night.