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 Diverse and charming Thai to die for A vibrant and tasty new trend of ethnic restaurants Friday, January 24, 2003 By Sarah Billingsley, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Sour, sweet, hot and salty. Bloomfield, Squirrel Hill, South Side and Verona.
The former describes the primary tastes of Thai cuisine; the latter names locations where, in the past two years, a crop of diverse and charming Thai restaurants has sprung up.
As befits a cuisine of vibrancy and nuance, we Pittsburghers suddenly have many good and varied choices in Thai restaurants. Tonight, shall we spend a slack evening in the cool bamboo ambience of Bangkok Balcony? Do we crave the flirtatious, clean flavors of Thai Me Up, or need to be energized by the spice and hum of kinetic Thai Cuisine in Bloomfield?
The Thai surge is part of a trend: Pittsburgh Asian restaurants (not counting Chinese, which are plentiful and long-familiar) are multiplying. In 2002, nine opened; five were Japanese, the others Thai, Indian, Cambodian and Thai/Chinese/Indian.
Pittsburgh has a large, mobile student population and an equally large Asian population: Combine the two and you've got a need for a diversity of good, inexpensive food and an audience for traditional ethnic foods.
"People here are open-minded to try different foods," says Usa "Lisa" Jirachertchoo-wong of Thai Cuisine in Bloomfield. Jirachertchoo-wong also credits the weather for the boom, "Thai food is hot for the cold."
The foods we know best from Thai restaurants are from the fertile central region of Thailand, where classic aromatics -- kaffir lime, mint, coriander, basil -- are relied upon. In the insular royal palaces of Bangkok, a textured and decorative royal cuisine was developed, the cuisine showcased at many local Thai restaurants.
Our Thai eateries are a tribe of ethnic restaurants with rare touches of everyday elegance: the soft, flute-y music you can only hear in the bathroom -- where there is a bouquet of fresh flowers -- at Bangkok Balcony; the colorful lidded pots with matching ladles, used for serving at Thai Cuisine; the frill of carved carrot resting on your platter of mee grob at Thai Place.
Without further ado, or apologies to those on the Atkins diet, here are the restaurants, arranged alphabetically.
Every review of Bangkok Balcony so far has described the long climb up the narrow stair to the second-floor dining room, the tantalizing smells of Thai cooking drawing you on and on.
On my first visit, those stairs and the dining room were heady with the fragrance of blooming narcissus.
More impressive to me is that at the end of that stair the renovated dining room makes the most of good light and a once-ugly warehouse-like space. The dining room is pleasantly open, decorated with lush plants and screens. The walls are a honeyed peachy yellow that distracts from the gray day beyond the front wall of tinted glass.
Other reviewers often rave about Bangkok Balcony's low prices, but every time I've dined there, when the bill arrives, it's always more expensive than I thought it would be. I blame that on the small but quality list of beers that includes Singha, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Anchor Steam, and a menu with many elegant choices that pair so well with beer.
The Zen ambience is more of a draw than the food, which is merely solidly good. Praram chicken, grilled and sliced over steamed spinach in a peanut curry sauce, was lovely and complex in its texture, colors and flavors, but the chicken was chewy and meager. Simple seafood with a basil garlic sauce, bountiful in mussels, shrimp, scallops and squid, was lukewarm.
Bangkok Balcony's service is always excellent, quick and friendly and its hip quotient is high -- sleek, black-clad Asian women perch at the bar -- yet its environment welcomes; many small children are scattered throughout the room.
I reviewed My Thai in these pages one year ago, and Roger Kun's restaurant -- sister to Sushi Toos and China Palaces all over Pittsburgh -- is still popular and precise.
My Thai is golden, the ceiling hung with silk and the walls almost bare. Packed tables of people star in this space.
My Thai's salads are a rung above many other restaurants; there are more to choose from, they feature luxurious ingredients like shredded duck, steak and grilled jumbo shrimp. The gang ped yang (roasted duck in curry) is an indulgent curried stew of fresh pineapple and tender duck. The spicy basil chicken, though steaming and sweet, was strangely absent of vegetables.
My Thai is a great introduction to Thai. The space is bright and safe, the service obliging, the menu longer, the portions smaller and food far milder in heat than any other Pittsburgh Thai establishment.
Thai Cuisine is the joint venture of the musically-named mother/daughter team of Thongsook Phonsopon and Usa "Lisa" Jirachertchoo-wong, who came to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles -- a city where the Thai competition is fierce -- and opened their restaurant July 12, 2001.
My brother's favorite appetizer at Thai Cuisine is found under House Specials, and gives any Italian joint in this town a run for its fryer: crispy calamari, perfect, salty, sizzling and light, never rubbery, served with super-spicy red chili sauce (on the side) and crunchy chunks of iceberg lettuce, for palate relief. It's the epitome of the Thai snack.
Also good are the ubercrisp miniature spring rolls, herbal fresh Thai cuisine rolls, the camping shrimp, wrapped in crisp threads of fried noodle like a Thai kataife and savory little balls of gingery minced chicken and pork.
I would rather the seafood dishes not include imitation crab (which, to the restaurant's credit, is honestly labeled on the menu), and that it instead featured more of the delicately curled gulf shrimp, sweet bay scallops, scored rolls of calamari, crab claws and hefty chunks of fish.
But when a dish is as vibrant as Gulf of Siam, flavored by ginger, garlic and intense wilted holy basil, who can complain?
What Thai Cuisine lacks in interior loveliness -- the dining room is a bit bare, though the student clientele don't seem to care -- it makes up for in liveliness. The restaurant is always crowded with interesting people, and roomy enough that there always seems to be a table waiting for you.
Despite its sexy dominatrix name, Thai Me Up is thoroughly wholesome: The food is straightforward, simple and fresh, the dining room bright and shabby chic.
Thai Me Up is one of several eclectic and virtuous restaurant/boites -- Cafe du Jour, Club Cafe, Le Pommier -- that channel the unique energy of the South Side. Not only does the cafe fill the void for Asian on the South Side, it's unbelievably inexpensive, and decorated in a quietly funky style that makes places that strive for kookiness -- the nearby Tiki Lounge, for example -- look tacky.
Inside, Thai Me Up resembles the kitchen of your friend the art student: The walls are each painted a different rich hue of goldenrod or crimson, and the mix-and-match chairs are spindly, fun and comfortable. It's quite a bit drafty; our very friendly waitress was wearing a cute striped scarf.
You won't find creamy sauces, sizzling platters or giant prawns at Thai Me Up. Instead, the food is quite light, the flavors focused and intense.
Spicy basil noodles are wide and silky, mixed with ribbons of egg and Napa cabbage and dressed with a garlic sauce that packed real heat. Red curry, floating with bamboo and baby corn, was a lovely shade of orange-pink, and every bite alternated between the refreshing bite of ginger, the warmth of chilies and the sweetness of basil.
Thai Me Up Tofu tofu, crisped in oil until it forms a light skin, is topped with thick peanut sauce and served on a bed of iceberg lettuce, which is a nice antidote to the richness of the sauce.
For a while, Santi and Surin Thamwiwat, husband and wife co-owners of the two Thai Places (in Shadyside and Fox Chapel) and Thai Place Cafe (in Oakland) had a Pittsburgh Thai monopoly.
Sure, an upstart surfaced here or there, then faded away -- Thai Garden on Atwood became La Fiesta, Little Bangkok in Bloomfield became a sub shop, House of Siam on McKnight has probably housed six other restaurants by now -- but they were never as enduring as upscale Thai Place.
From 1992 until last year, the Shadyside Thai Place was in a glassy bistro space off Walnut on Bellefonte; now the restaurant is in the space once occupied by Tai Pei. The new digs are updated and elegant, decorated in restful beige. Soothing Thai Muzak pulses. There are pearl-topped tables, live bamboo plants and a row of comfortable booths across from a mirrored bar. Green glowing orb lighting and Thai art masquerading as tchotchkes, in a case by the door, balance the more sedate features.
The wait staff is solicitous but not overly perky; they'll guide you through the extensive menu of classics and several dozen new dishes, including the seductive samosa of crab, cream cheese and yellow curry and a deliciously sour mango curry, my current obsession.
Emerald tofu, on a bed of juicy spinach, is slathered in an unctuous peanut sauce. Spicy calamari featured crisp veggies, long tubes of chewy, cross-hatched squid, and a sauce with enough spice to make your lips tingle.
The Fox Chapel Thai Place occupies a space that is less transformed, but the food is no less impressive. House Special tiger prawns -- gigantic specimens! -- swam in an intoxicating red curry.
Thai Place Cafe is airy and casual. It's BYOB, and an inexpensive place to try the Thamwiwat's terrific pad Thai and Thai pizzas topped with peanut sauce and green curry.
Unfortunately, Ocha, a raw gem of a tiny quick-lunch in Verona, closed many weeks ago, to reopen Jan. 31 under new management.
But the boxy dining room is still crammed with warring elements of kitsch and elegance: yellow lace curtains at the wide cafe windows, low-slung cane chairs at tables covered with florid tropical cloth, knotty wood-paneled walls hung with illuminated portraits of the royal family and Rama IX, Bhumibol Adulyadej, king of Thailand since 1946. Stay tuned.
In Thailand, there's a strong, respected tradition of street vendors.
During the hot afternoon hours when early meals are taken, vendors provide the lighter snacks and soups a nation munches on. Tapping into that rich street legacy and providing cheap eats for people on a shoestring budget are several mobile Thai units in Oakland.
Namsai Express is the Thai truck parked in Schenley Plaza. For $3.25 to $4.50, you can buy cheap, good eats. Red curry pineapple tofu has a good lick of heat to it. The eggplant tofu tasted of lemongrass. Unlike the Thai restaurants, Namsai offers a table of help-yourself condiments: nam pla, sriracha, garlic chili paste and soy sauce.
In Thai, brung rot dtam jai chorp ("season to your heart's desire"): Thai is a trend worth celebrating.
Sarah Billingsley can be reached at sbillingsley@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1661.
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