Lhy Thai

Lhy Thai
7357 Edmonds Street
Burnaby, BC

In the last couple of weeks, I think we have had a good share of blog posts of Thai restaurants. I am not talking about myself, I only visited Tangthai with Victoria (and was also visited by other food bloggers) but Victoria also visited Maenam. And prior to that, shokutsu of Foodosophy, visited Lhy Thai. So, in its own funny way, I chose to semi-continue that trend by visiting that same restaurant, Lhy Thai.

Aside from its claim of authenticity, there were even some certificates hanging at the entrance, the other claim is that of cheap lunches. How cheap? How about $7? Sure, you can go for cheaper *cough*Kent’s Kitchen*cough*; however, we might be comparing apples to oranges. That begs the question: if there was such claim, how come I haven’t been here before? It happens they only have lunch Monday to Friday. On Saturdays, they are only open for dinner and closed on Sundays. I guess they are quite confident on what they serve, combined with several factors, which then allows them to fully control their hours. So, on a weekday I had off, I chose to have lunch there instead of almost any place I could think of.

Out of all their lunch options, I ended up going for their green curry. The reason was simple: out of all items from the lunch menu, it provides different unique components you could try. How many? How about…

Click on the picture for a larger version in a new window

From top left, clockwise, pickled cucumber, spring roll, slice of orange and pork satay. The cucumber was slightly acidic and had some hints of sugar. That worked fine for me, as it provided some balance for the rest of what was on the plate. The spring roll was average. It had some sauce already on top and, while it was crispy, there wasn’t much other characteristics to it. I will skip to orange because… Well, it is orange. And finally, the satay was strange. Notice that the one in the picture was flipped, i.e., as served, it had a blob of peanut sauce on top which was a bit too sweet for my liking. Fortunately, that did not kill the pork goodness of that satay. And then…

The curry. At first, I was disappointed with what was served. If you look at the second picture notice there weren’t that many pieces of chicken. Instead, there seemed to be an overload of bamboo shoots. After a couple of spoonfuls on top of the rice, I started to notice the coconut taste with some sweetness in it. There was a bit of spiciness at the very end and I barely broke a sweat (a reminder, I tend to sweat when eating spicy food). No, it wasn’t THAT spicy, rather, there was some lingering at the very end. Now, that does not really explain how good it is so, instead, I will defer it to the fact I finished the rice but barely made it to half of bowl of curry! So I ended up asking for another bowl of rice and finish the rest. Make your own conclusion based on this!

While curry is a single dish, I did something I do in somewhat rare occasions: Do a revisit before even posting about it. What happens is that on a Saturday night, I was doing some errands in the area and stopped to grab some dinner before heading home. When I walk in and mentioned I wanted to order take out, I was told there will be a 15+ minutes wait. WTH?! OK, that is fine as that would give me some time to get some groceries so I made my order, went shopping and came back, all that in ~20 minutes. What, the food is still not ready? After almost 30 minutes, I was given a big paper bag with two containers. In the first tone…

Phat Thai Goong, aka, pad that with prawns. When I opened it, I was a bit disappointed by the reddish colour. However, then I noticed something… Strange… In previous instances where I had disappointing pad thai, it was more often than not, orange but also there was pool of sauce at the bottom. Not here. Sure, it was orange-y but it was somewhat dry as well. Also, the strands of noodles were not clumped to each other and you could easily separate one from each other if you wanted to. And one funny note: I was asked how spicy I wanted it to be and I told them “as spicy as you would eat it”. It was spicy, made me break a sweat but it was “good” spiciness. The one thing I thought it was missing was a lime/lemon wedge; fortunately, I had some at home so I just squeezed some on top.

To round things up, some stuffed chicken wings. One thing to note: they do not make a claim of boneless, so I was partially expecting to find some bones in it – and I wasn’t mistaken. There was some but I am used to eating meats with bone-in so I wasn’t bothered at all.

That aside, there were still pieces of chicken and skin (which was what kept the “shape”) filled with a mixed of some noodles and what I thought to minced pork (might be wrong here, though). It was fried crispy and, rather than the dipping sauce, I thought the lime juice worked better.

Overall, the food had some highs and some lows; however, based on the price, I thought it was a really good deal. Sure, timing was not the best but, given it is not such a large operation, they deliver on thing well: good food.

Tagged under: Burnaby • Chicken • Dinner • Lunch • Noodles • Thai