A Three Course Meal

As a whole, this meal is worthy of a total of 3 forks, but some dishes were spectacular and deserve higher marks and indipendent credit. The shrimp mushroom cream soup is one of these. It was spectacular and as you can see, eaten with gusto (it's already been finished in the photo). It was basically a chowder with shrimp instead of clam, and even was served with a patty of butter melted on the top. It was finished before the butter even stopped melting. Hilary and I were clashing spoons before long. We liked the soup so much that we contimplated ordering another bowl and right now I'd say that would've been a fantastic idea. Instead we ate the other dishes we'd ordered, mixed veggies and sweet & sour fish (not an entire fish this time), which were both about average, but whose taste had been diminished by the utter deliciousness of the soup. I can't really even think of the other two indipendent of the soup. I think the S&S fish was decent and the vegetables well cooked so that they retained some of their snap but took on some of the seasoning they were fried in. The soup is really what carried the day and it was easily worth 4 forks, maybe even 4.5.

Real Pho Chay

Coming into Dalat, we had passed a restaurant called Com Chay which means vegetarian food. We had made plans to eat there, hoping to get a good bowl of pho. The menu listed dishes such as BBQ shrimp, beef fried vegetables and pho chay. I had the pho chay and Hilary went with the shrimp, thinking it was a bit odd that a place calling its self vegetarian would offer meat. As it turned out, there was no meat, instead both our dishes came with meat substitute, Hilary's looking like little shrimps and mine, well, I got at least three different types, all of which looked like sandwich meat. The pho was thick with oil that had to be eaten fast so it did not coagulate and form a nasty crust on the top, and the faux-meat was less than palatable fare. It was gross and rubbery, like you had bitten of some bicycle tire tubing. Calling the this stuff a meat substitute is like calling a spare tire a wheel replacement. Add to that the repugnant flavor the meatless meat gave the broth, and it's a wonder that I was able to stomach the dish. It's a credit to the constitution of my stomach I guess. Plus, just about the only vegetable in sight was the green onion diced up and layed over top. Worthless. 1.5 forks.

Are Veggies In Dalat Different?

I don't know if vegetables are different in Dalat, though I suppose that some of those in this dish (Dalat Mixed Vegetables) only grow in colder climates such as Dalat's. I have seen a lot of menus that have vegetable dishes named similarly, so perhaps that's just propiganda to garner attention. I don't really know. Though I've tried several of these dishes because Hilary often orders them, none has seemed all that different in constitution, all seemingly a combination of veggies the cook found in the fridge that day in some sort of sauce (the sauce rarely is the same). This particular incarnation of mixed veggies was damn good though oddly cold, like it'd been sitting out for a while despite the relative quickness with which it was served. Perhaps someone ordered it and sent it back. I don't know, but the taste was good even though the temp was less than desired. Hilary had equally strange problems with her meal, supposedly a vegetable pizza that arrived looking much more like a Hawaiian style pizza. In the end, we were over-charged and when we asked why the price rise the waiter braught us a different menu than the one we'd ordered from, with all the prices increased by about 5,000-10,000 dong. We were bitter and cold and did not wish to haggle with this bastard, instead prefering to swear the butt-smear and to louse up their reputation: don't ever eat at The Lotus in Dalat! 3 forks for the food, and 0 forks for the restaurant.

Pho Chay, That Was Actually Rau

Again I borded the pho rau train. When I first got to Vietnam, I thought Pho Chay meant pho with veggies, but it turned out I was wrong and chay means vegetarian, not vegetable, so I had been going around asking for pho without meat when what I wanted was pho with vegetables instead of meat, or occasionally in addition to meat. This particular bowl of pho was eaten at Pho Bin in Dalat. It was not good, nor was the restaurant. I wouldn't recommend it, especially with so many other respectable places to eat in Dalat. We only ate here because we were tired and wanted to get something to eat before it got late. We over-paid and were under-satisfied, not a good combination. It seriously lacked vegetables, though the broth was okay despite being a bit spicier than we expected. I think this was the type of place you eat at and leave as fast as you can and never look back, forgetting even the meal if possible. I wish I could, and now, maybe having written this, I can. 2 forks.

Broken Rules

No sooner had I set a rule - no meat from a bus stop diner - than I broke it, ordering pho ga (chicken pho). On my very next opportunity. I didn't pay too heavy a price, no inner bleeding, no wretching or awful intestinal spasm, no aliens leaping from my stomach, but the food was about as expected which is to say, bad. I did manage to stomach the thing, nevermind the danger I knew I was facing. The chicken was thin of actual edible meat, instead being mostly bone, tendon, cartilage, fat and spilled marrow, and there were virtually no veggies to make up for the lack. The broth was all right, probably a chicken base instead of the usual pork. In the end, I ate it and survived with a full and un-unxious stomach, so it worked out, but no more than 2 forks.

A Menu Too Vast

If you find your self at a restaurant that has a menu that requires an index and cross-references, well, you should probably leave, order something so basic a cow could cook it with his/her hooves, or expect the worst because otherwise you're going to be severelly disappointed. This was true of the World's Food Cafe. They truly offered food from every country in the world and had the menu broken up into sections named after the nationality of the cuisine. I, figuring I'd not have another chance to get Italian food again until maybe Hanoi, but probably longer even still, ordered the Pasta Siciliana, a baked penne and cheese affair. You probably can't tell from the picture, but it was greasier than an Italian mobsters hair. I could barely stomach half of the sizzling portion that arrived at our table. And they made the unforgivable mistake of sweetening the sauce so that it tasted more of sugar than tomato, as it was supposed to. There was however a hearty amount of cheese nicely melted across the top, even crispy in spots. After finishing what I could, I had to go to the bathroom to wash the oil from my face. Maybe that was too much cheese. In the end, I should've known looking at the menu that a place offering much specializes in little. A generous 2.5 forks.

Pizza!

I love pizza and when we pulled into Ho Chi Minh City and found our way to the part of the city where all the tourists stay, the first pizza joint I came across, the Italian Eatery, got my business. As it turned out, it wasn't all that bad of a choice. The pizza was alright, avoiding the sweet sauce problem that usually afflicts pizza around the world, not just beyond the borders of the US. Sugary sauce is flat disgusting. You wouldn't sprinkle sugar on your french fries, nor would you toss a little over top of a salad, so what the hell gives people the idea that it should be in tomato sauce. Disgusting! Anyway, this pizza may well have been wood fired, but I'm not sure. The crust was well enough crispy, though a bit thinner than I prefer. In the end, it was just above average, but only barely, receiving 3 forks. I don't have much to say about it really. It left little imprint.

Not Pho Rau

When you're traveling and your road time overlaps with a meal time, the buses always stop at these bus stop restaurants that offer mediocre food (that's probably a generous characterization of the food). Generally it is my view that the meat at these places is suspect at best and outright dangerous at worst, so I avoid it like dog shit, or a mud puddle, if your more comfortable with that analogy. I think these restaurants, if you can call them that, make very little effort because they have prearranged deals with the bus companies and are situated in places where you have no choice but to eat at them if you are hungry. At this particular place, they had very little worth mention and I ordered the closest thing to pho rau I could find, which was noodle soup with vegetables. As you can see, it was accurate to say with vegetables because, well, it'd be laughable to say it the other way, which would in effect be saying the vegetables were accompanied by the noodles. It is very clearly the opposite. (The green things parallel to eachother are my chopsticks.) The noodles themselves were only half done and might have been linguini, though I'm not certain. And the veggies, well, they were alright what there was of them. I have this meal listed as being worthy of 2 forks, but I cannot possibly have been in my right mind when I wrote that, so I am dropping it to 1 fork. It was well below average, though I suppose average for bus stop fare.

Vietnam, We Have Arrived for Pho

Everyone who is anyone who loves food, knows that Pho is fantastic and comes from Vietnam. So it was that immediatly upon arrival, we hunted out a place to get our first taste of genuine Vietnamese Pho. We found it at Pho 81. I think that was the name of the place, but the 81 part could've been the address and the Pho part could've been advertising. It was a hole-in-the-wall place, and often they either don't have names, or don't advertise them, at least that's what we've found. Anyway, I ordered the Pho Rau (vegetable rice noodle soup) which has quickly become a staple for me. At this first place, the array of veggies was not what I'd hoped and I don't think I can identify any but the chives and bean sprouts. I wasn't detered by this, though a little disappointed. The soup was good though with a flavorful broth and an adequate amount of noodles, but it was nothing like the Pho from Pho Ye Shen in Eugene, Oregon. The best pho in the world because its vast mixture of veggies and its absurdly low price, at least by US standards. The people who ran the joint were very friendly and we became pretty tight with them, but that doesn't change the facts about their fair. It was average at best. I gave it 3 forks at the time, but it might have been less if it wasn't my first. But then expectations usually destroy the first time anyway.

Kampot Crab

According to our Lonely Planet, before the Khmer Rouge took over, in France no self-respecting chef or restaurant would be without Kampot's precious pepper. After this meal, I could see why. We had been hearing about how great the crab was in Kampot since before we left and had been anxious to try it since we arrived. It is all incredibly fresh, coming over from a small town about 20kms away whose name I do not recall and do not wish to search through the travel blog to find. The Jasmine, a restaurant owned by a mixed couple, the man a US citizen and the woman Vietnamese, looked like the best place and as it was our 2 year anniversary, we wanted to splurge a little (dinner ended up costing a whopping $30usd). We both got the crab with Kampot green pepper and were well pleased. It was delicous. The pepper was not overwhelmingly spicey but rather slightly sweet and soft, almost like capers. Even after all the crab was picked clean, we continued to fish out the peppercorns to eat on their own, that is how good they were. The crabs themselves were a little smaller than I would've liked and we were not made entirely full, but what meat there was was succulent and perfectly cooked. My only complaint is the amount of meat to be had and with that in mind, I gave the meal 4 forks.

One Whole Freakin' Fish

I don't know about any of you, but when I order sweet and sour anything I do not expect to find the entire thing confronting me from my plate, no full feathered chicken, no hairy pig and certainly no fish face. Never-the-less, that is what we found at the Beach Side Hotel (perhaps we should've realized that things were not as they might seem or be as advertised by the places appearance; there was no beach what-so-ever, and in fact, the restaurant was hung over a river with almost no recognizable bank). It was original, you can say that. Generally when you order S&S, you expect breaded mouth-sized morsels. The fish its self was quite fresh, probably even caught that day, and the sauce was spectacular, heavy with pineapple, green bell peppers and maybe even a little papaya - sweet but sour too, neither out-flavoring the other and no singing vinegar taste to scorche your throat. Unfortunately the fish was not entirely de-scaled, and there were numerous bones to fish out of our mouths or risk eviscerating our asophegouses (you'll come to expect terrible spelling throughout this blog). We wanted to acquire the recipe, but in the end just settled for paying the bill and leaving with our throats in tact. The sauce its self was worth upwards of 4.5 forks, but the fact that it was served over a whole fish with no breading drops the meal down 2 forks to 2.5.

A Philly in Phnom Penh

A philly cheesesteak is about one of the last things I expected to find in Phnom Penh, but still, there it was on the menu at the Green Vespa, a small, pub-ish English style restaurant and bar. I of course ordered it. I love cheesesteaks and I couldn't pass up the novelty of it, and it came with fries, which are always welcome to me (I believe if you look back you'll see my stated belief that anything's good when fried). I was not let down, not that I had gradiose expectations or anything, but one always hopes for the best. The steak was cooked nicely and had very little fat. Nothing ruins a good steak sandwiche faster than chewing, touch meat. It was even a little over-fried in spots making it crisp the way I like it. And the fries, well, they might as well have gotten them from a McDonalds. I of course have an adequate dislike for McDonalds for numerous reasons, none of which I care to recount here, however, I do respect their fries. They're just good. Hilary didn't even have to salt them as she generally does. The Green Vespa deserves recommendation to any travelor and I happily give the cheesesteak 3.5 forks. The cheese wasn't swiss or even provalone. I don't rightly know what kind of cheese it was. They're pretty new to cheese here.

The Norvegian

I have always had an affinity for sandwiches, especially those with melted cheese and toasted bread, so panini sandwiches fit my taste nicely though I only became a fan in the past year. While in Phnom Penh, Vanessa and Cullen guided us to the Melting Pot, a little restaurant near the market owned by some French friends of theirs. We went and were happy to find smoked salmon paninies on the menu. I think Hilary ended up having a veggie panini while I had the salmon. As you can see, the sandwiche was rather large, toasted nicely, not too brown but still crisp, and very full with mazzerella, so much so that it stretched out like silly puddy when you pulled a section away. In the future I would go with the veggie for one simple reason: salmon do not frequent Southeast Asia and so the smoked salmon I had had to be shipped in and thus was, well, fishy. I liked the sandwiche very much despite this fact, and I ate every bit plus a couple sections of Hilary's that she could not finish. I was full when we left. Aside from the price being a slight exorbanant (that word is probably spelled wrong, but it is to say that the price was high), though this is to be expected when the recipe is not only foreign, but so are the ingrediants that constitute it. The basil that was included was a nice touch and pushed the meal up to 3.5 forks. I'd eat it again, though better the veggie, as I said.

Margherita?!?

As I've said in this blog before and will say again here, I not only love pizza to such an extent that I'd gladly eat at least a slice a day, but I consider myself a bit of an enthusiast, they way a sports card collector may consider themselves one. So, it was about time that we try some Southeast Asian pizza. We went to FCC (don't recall what this stands for, maybe something like the Foreign Correspondents Cabana - it had something to do with foreign correspondents, but I don't recall and didn't buy a shirt) because they were rumored to have the best pizza in town and cook it in a wood-fired brick oven, which I believe to be true. We ordered margherita pizzas all around and though they did not arrive the same as other margherita pizzas I've had, namely with freshly chopped basil and freshly sliced tomatoes uncooked across the top, they were very good. I do prefer my pizza buy the slice for reasons I'm not going to discuss here other than to say, it is rarely soggy, but this pizza wasn't soggy either and though it lacked much crust it was very good and my mouth waters just looking at the picture now. I miss good pizza second only to family and friends. I have written that the pizza was worth 3 forks, but looking at it now I'm going to give it 3.5 forks. How generous?

Chicken Thali

As you can see in the picture, I was too hungry to wait. I only remembered near the end of the meal when Hilary reminded me. The food was good, not great, but very good. As usual, the dhal was below what I prefer, but the chicken was boneless and the vegetable curry was well seasoned. The raita left something to be desired though, the lactose and water seperated already when it arrived on the table. Unfortunately, this thali did not feature tandoori chicken, which is simply marvelous almost no matter the cook. In the end, I cannot fairly say I forgot to take a picture because the food was so delectable, only that I was starving. However, it was above average, even the dhal (though it can't hold a lighter much less a candle to Krishna's in Suva). I gave it 3.5 forks at the time, and that sounds about right even.

Desperation Yields Moderate Results

Arriving in Phnom Penh after a moderately long bus ride, Hilary and I began wandering the streets until we managed to get ahold of our friend Cullen (we hadn't met him yet, but since we've become friends with him and his wife Vanessa). He had to work until 5ish, so we made plans to meet him at the US embassy then. This meant we had a little more than 5 hours to kill. We were hungry and started looking but being unfamiliar with the city and overwhelmed by its speed and size, not to mention the motobike drivers racing down the streets like they were auditioning for another "The Fast and the Furious" sequal, it took us quite a while and eventually we settled on a Chinese place that looked reasonably priced. I got the fried fish. It was good, having a satisfying amount of fish as well as some carrots, chinese broccoli and an abundance of garlic. I ate it happily. It was food you can reasonably expect to get in any Chinese joint from McMinnville to Miami, and everywhere in between. What I mean is it was average, but satiating, worth 3 forks.

Veggie Soup with Steamed Rice

This dish was absolutely pathetic, which is a shame because it was acquired at the White Rose, a place Lonely Planet regarded highly in the edition we have. It was bland, almost without taste beyond the veggies. I'm fairly certain they just boiled the vegetables and served to me calling it soup becuas they put a dash of cumbled peanuts over top. It did have a nice combination of vegetables, but that's simply not soup. I doused the thing in soy sauce and still it lacked flavor. No excuse for such unacceptable fare, and the rice was cold. In the end, I got a stomach ache from it, though it could've been the onset of the dehydration. I prefer to blame it on the soup. 1 fork!

A Burrito for Breakfast in Battambang

I've never been big on the idea of a burrito for breakfast, something about the combo of egg and tortilla turns me off, and accordingly I have never until Battambang eaten one. This one appealed to me because I love Mexican food and because it seemed odd that I'd find it in a town no bigger than maybe 40,000 people and not really a tourist destination of great import. You could get the burrito in various arrangements and I had mine with the works; hashbrowns, egg and bacon. It arrived about as you see it now, except for the one incision on the bottom left. I was hungry and went at it before Hilary reminded me to take a picture, which she's been great at. The salsa smeared across the top was actually quite respectable, better than Reiser's anyway, probably because it was fresh. As for the ingrediants, well, they were respectable but not above average really. I prefer my bacon a bit crispier and with less fat. In the end it was good enough tasting to get 3 forks but later that day Hilary got a purticularly vicious stomach ache and had to stay in while I went out to check the sights (read the other blog for details). She insists that it was dehydration got her, but I think it was the food. My stomach ache didn't come until the following day and was almost certainly due to dehydration as I spent all the previous afternoon hiking around without any water what-so-ever, like a damned fool. I paid for this for the next week. Stay hydrated kids!

Korko Soup

Korko soup is supposedly a specialty of Cambodia, however, the Khmer Kitchen in Seim Reap was the only place in the entire country that served it as far as I could tell, and I most certainly looked everywhere we ate because it was one of the best meals I've had all trip. The soup is quite thick as you can tell, and comes with a variety of meats. I got mine with shrimp of which there were plenty. The broth is akin to maybe a pumpkin curry and indeed it had pumpkin in it as well as some odd grain similar to quinoa though the menu asserted it was roasted rice. Also floating along with the shrimps were spinach and obergine. It was utterly delicous and I urge any reader to look up the recipe. I found several hits on google.com but did not investigate any further. I leave it to you and your faster internet and superior computers (I think the one I'm using now is the very same one I learned on in middle school). Anyhow, this meal gets a whopping 5 forks as I cannot think of anything it was missing.

How Did Gandhi Do It?

Conveniently enough, just about every restaurant we’d want to eat in in Siem Reap was on the same block as our guest house, so he hadn’t far to walk which was very nice after days spent scaling innumerable stairs at the various wats we visited. If it wasn’t clear before let me restate it here, I love Indian food, and thankfully Hilary does to. So, on our third night in town we ate at the India House. This time I ordered the Vegetable Thali, same as Hilary. This dish came with all the same stuff except in place of the naan, roti, instead of steamed rice, Indian fried rice, and instead of chicken, Palak Aloo, a spinach and potato dish. The Palak Aloo was just about perfect, which is a reasonably difficult feat to achieve considering the propensity to over oil. Palak Aloo is one of Hilary’s favorite Indian dishes and she ate it with gusto. I like it as well, but not as much as a multitude of other things. We were considering ourselves pretty lucky at that point, though a little concerned about the amount of money things were costing. We’ve been using USD here instead of reil. It’s much preferable and cheaper to use a foreign currency. This meal rates 3.5 forks as did the last Indian food we had. The Dahl wasn’t as good and I prefer garlic naan, but the Palak Aloo was better (I tasted Hilary’s at the last place) and it was a smidgen cheaper.

As a personal note, my stomach had performed masterfully and heroically to this point, but once we hit Battambang, it took a decided turn for the worse. I don’t know exactly what precipitated it, but you’ll surely be clued in later in the blog as I have my suspicions.

Mucho Mexican

Siem Reap, as a tourist Mecca, has just about every kind of food you can imagine, including Mexican, so Hilary and I headed to Viva, a nice open air restaurant a block from our lodging. The menu was good enough to have quesadillas, burritos, tacos, enchiladas, tostadas and what I had, which I can’t remember the name of (unfortunately, Hilary is not here to remind me). As you can see in the picture, it came with a side of refried beans, Mexican rice and some salad. Inside my fried tortilla were beans, carrots, rice and cheese. I liked well enough but it didn’t garner much attention and I spent most of the time thinking of the fresh mango sorbet I’d get across the street once we were finished (for the record, I ate one for breakfast and one after dinner every night we were there and I loved it). I have very little to say about this meal on either side. It didn’t distinguish its self in either direction, but I enjoyed it, so I think 3 forks is about fair.

All Bun, No Eggplant

All along the entrance to the backside of Angkor Wat, there are small village restaurants offering all kinds of Khmer food, so for lunch on our first day we stopped at the Angkor Kitchen. I had the Rice Noodle Vegetable Soup which was I think set in a chicken broth. As you can see, it had cabbage, carrot and Chinese broccoli, and that was it for veggies. Very disappointing. When you order something you expect it to have a lot of whatever’s in the title. You don’t order an eggplant burger and get one slice of eggplant on a bulbous bun, so what’s the deal? Needless to say, or perhaps it’s basically already been said but I’m going to say it outright, I was disappointed. It was like I’d bought a car and it arrived without a stereo and wheels. It was easy on the stomach however, and somewhat better than the mystery chicken dish Hilary had. In the end, I ate it and was okay. 2 forks is deserving, but maybe I shouldn’t rate this one at all, an incomplete review for an incomplete meal. The coconut shake was amazing though.

Indian Summer

As many of you may know, I love Indian food (not to be confused with Native American food which would consist of corn and beans, I guess). Now, surprisingly, we couldn’t find any Indian food in Bangkok, though Hilary says there is a specific part of town where you can get it. The city is so ridiculously sprawling that we never bothered, besides, we’d read that there was plenty to be had in Siem Reap, and as it turned out there was. On our first night we went down some darkening alley and found the Indian Corner which had a rather large menu and respectable prices. I am a Dahl lover foremost, but that is not a main dish, so I ordered the Tandoori Chicken Thali because it came with three kinds of chicken, garlic naan, a veggie curry, rice, raita and yes, Dahl. The picture doesn’t do the meal justice, but it does give you a fair idea of how much I enjoyed it – so much that I forgot to take a picture until I’d eaten most of the chicken. As far as Indian goes, this was pretty good. It wasn’t as good as in Fiji, but I’ve had much worse. And the naan was perfect. The meal earned 3.5 forks. Oh, and the Dahl was pretty alright, not great, it wouldn’t make you forget you were full, but it was alright.

Rob Schneider

Despite only having been abroad for a little over two weeks, it was plenty long to be away from Mexican food. So it was that Hilary and I stopped at Sabroso Mexican Grill. I had a soft taco and a classic taco, both with shredded barbeque chicken (last I checked, BBQ was a flavor more indigenous to those places north of the boarder, but what are you going to do?). As far as Mexican food abroad goes, especially in a country thousands of miles from Mexico, this was at least passable, like casting Rob Schneider when you can’t get Adam Sandler. Anyway, I was just happy to eat something that at least resembled Mexican food. At the time I was so glad I would’ve given the food a four, but I’ve come down from that hysteria since and the meal gets a well deserved 3 forks. The salsa was decent, and it had cheese which is a rare thing in Thailand. Evidently Thais are recent comers to cheese and it is taking quite an effort for cheese manufacturers to make any headway. I know, you’re all stunned, but I assure you this is entirely true.

Lad Nasty Once Again (What's Wrong With Me?)

Once again I was duped by Lad Na. This time I should’ve known better. I even said as I ordered, “Lad Na, that sounds familiar. I’ll take it.” Oh yeah, it was familiar, familiarly disgusting. As I watched the cook begin to prepare it, I had high hopes. The meat he put into the pot was nicely pink and there were veggies too, but what came out deserved to be in one of the tales of the Brothers Grimm. The meat was mysteriously gray, the broth was most like a collection of snail sludge and the noodles, well, they and the veggies were the only redeeming qualities. As I gutted the meal out, all but the meat, the cook kept looking over to either see if I was enjoying it, which I was most certainly not, or because he was thinking, “I cannot believe this dumb bastard is actually eating that.” Either way, he was looking. I raced through what I could handle, tossed my bowl in with the other dirty dishes and retreated to the nearest corner store for some ice cream to cleanse my violated palate. No more Lad Na. It gets 1 fork, which is beyond generous.

No Wind Beneath These Wings

Since we got here, I’ve been eye what looked to me like delicious chicken wings. Well, in Pimai I got my chance. After arriving in town and getting a place to stay, we headed out for food with noisy stomachs. The first place we came to was a chicken wing stand with several thatch-roofed tables to eat at. The wings are cooked in a barbeque-smoker hybrid in between two dried bamboo shafts that press together tightly to keep them in place. I did not ask what type of glaze was on them, but I am almost certain it was of the honey variety. They were spectacular. I would rid the world of the wings of chickens if I were allowed to eat as many as I pleased. They were sweet and sticky, tender and smoky. There were so many at the beginning I could hardly see my plate. What I’m getting at is that they were fantastic and amazing… fantazing? Anyway, we ordered them along with Som Tam and sticky rice, but they were the highlight. The Som Tam was pretty good, but we made the mistake of forgetting to tell them no dried shrimp, so it was fraught with what amounted to bouillon landmines that you would spring on you as you happily chewed your food. Never get the dried shrimp! Anyway, I cannot allow the salty saddlebags to sully the high marks that the wings justly deserve. The wings get 4.5 forks, while the rest is just plain forgotten. Water near a bridge.

Restaurant Pad Thai

Waiting at the train station to leave Ayutaia, we had a couple hours to kill and skipped over to a guest house to get some lunch. I tried the Pad Thai, my first Thai restaurant Pad Thai. It was really pretty good. Not spectacular, but better than what I’ve had to date (the high marks the first Pad Thai guy can only be accounted for my travel delirium). For the first time, the pepper and sugar that comes on all Pad Thai in Thailand arrived instead in a small plastic package on the side. I used all of the pepper and discarded the sugar. It could’ve used more veggies and as you might expect, it was a little greasy, but all in all, it was good and worth at least 3 forks, maybe even 3.5.

Som Tam

Som Tam, or Green Papaya Salad, is a common dish throughout Southeast Asia and so I had my first at the Ayutaia night market. It was very nicely prepared as I watched the vender mash up peppers (I chose two), fresh squeezed lime juice, fish sauce, a handful of garlic cloves still in their papery skins and peanuts in a wooden pestle and mortar set. After that was mashed up to taste – the woman let me taste the sauce with a spoon that she maybe had kept in a cup of water to at least partially wash of the remnants of the last taster’s mouth – she mixed in shredded green papaya and carrot. The dish has a rather large international following and some people come just to do a tour of the different regional interpretations, so I had moderately high expectations. While they weren’t let down, they weren’t fulfilled either. It was good, but need something more. I could’ve added small crabs or dried shrimp, but had opted not to as neither looked enticing, the crab especially so because it was still an entire crab, pinchers and all. It was as I have learned through further Som Tam experience, average. It earned 2.5 forks. What could really push it above and beyond is some fresh prawns. Now that would be something to savor, something to visit for.

Where's the Damn Broccoli?

When Hilary and I first got into Ayutaia, we headed straight for Tony’s Place to find a room as we had read that it was the primo guest house in town, however, we were turned away, not because we appeared incredibly bedraggled, which would surely have been the case, but because they were already full up. So, instead of staying there we ate lunch. I had Large Noodles with Veggies and Tofu. If the rooms were anything like our meal, well, if I wasn’t writing this blog, it wouldn’t have warranted mention. Lunch was all together pedestrian. I was obliged to give it 2.5 forks. First, there was far too much fried egg. I mean, it doesn’t even say an egg is involved at all on the menu and yet I got at least 3 all scrambled up with my noodles. What’s more, there was no broccoli whatsoever, despite the fact that it was prominently mention in the description of the dish. There were not enough noodles for my liking either. And finally, as usual, it was greasy.

Rotti

At the night market in Ayutaia, they have all kinds of food to choose from and in the Lonely Planet guide it suggests a Mediterranean dish called Rotti, which we hope was like the Indian roti but we found was not at all. Rotti is a doughy thing filled with your choice of bananas, egg, chicken puree or beef puree, at least at this place. I chose the beef because, well, the meat looked like perhaps it had been sunning its self for a while and may just be a little dodgy. Beef always sounds like the safest bet in these situations. No salmonella, I think? Anyway, they mixed in some Chinese cabbage and some other veggie, fried in the wok and served it up ready cut for you so you don’t have to strain your wrist fumbling with a steak knife or butcher the thing because whatever utensil you have is not sharp enough and so you shred the dough instead of cutting it. Thankfully, the meat was finished and the veggies were nicely cooked and seasoned. It was very good in fact, and I would surely eat it again if I were afforded the opportunity. I gave it 3.5 forks.

Pad Thai This Cook Up

This street corner Pad Thai was not so delicious. In fact, it was greasy, overly sweet, hardly had any vegetables in it and was ugly. The only nice thing I have to say about it other than it was cheap is that it wasn’t too hot. This would’ve been better sold from a lunch cart at a construction site like in a Carl’s JR commercial than a restaurant, and perhaps that is why it was being served on the corner of an alley by a bust station in Ayutaia (I probably spelled that wrong). I gave it a low 2 forks for lack of decency. Pad Thai is an easy enough dish to prepare and should never be fouled up as bad as this.