Pattaya Thai

Pattaya Thai
406 Sixth Street
New Westminster, BC

It makes me wonder at times what is the general perception of the general readership about blogs. This is specially considering when I was personally attacked in two posts because my “lack of knowledge” on the subject. The funny thing is that I have never claimed expertise! (Even funnier is the fact some points in the comments are plain incorrect). Of course, that does not give me a free pass to freely say what I want, instead, I want readers to held me accountable, as I have mentioned previously. Of course, as long as you don’t go calling names, everything is fair game. With that in mind, that brings the question, what are the standards of printed publications? For example, when Karl wrote about Pattaya Thai, an editor from a local magazine attacks him. I have know Karl for some time and, while we might disagree on some things, I will have to also say he has really interesting insight and opinions about the food – and I respect him for that. But, still I knew I had to visit this restaurant and find out by myself what is so “special” about it. And that opportunity came when Sherman‘s hockey team (who, other than “Gadget Girl”, I won’t even try to list their names, on that note, Sherman’s post is here!) went there one night and checked with me to see if I wanted to tag along.

Given that I had a heads up notice of place and time, it won’t be a surprise I arrived first and snatched the parking spot right in front of the restaurant. And, indeed, it is a small place. Given Sherman’s team had already made reservations in advance, it was just a matter for me to look for the largest tables they set up together. The rest of the restaurant? It was mostly booths for 4 adults at most. Interestingly, if your party is greater than four, they may put a regular table next to it to “fit” the additional customers. Anyway, once Sherman’s team arrived, it was time to check for the food and drinks and what not.

Thai Iced Coffee to the left; Thai Ice Tea to the right.

Considering my recent dinners meals with Victoria, our Vancouver Thai food expert, there has been some dishes/drinks I wanted to try ever since and, in this case, I started off with Thai iced tea. OK, this drink might be almost a staple but, let’s just say, prior to me meeting here, I wouldn’t have really thought about it. In this case, it was OK. If I had to compare it to the one I had in Tangthai, this one would be inferior. At least, it didn’t have that extremely sugary taste as the one in Thai House… And, probably not to be outdone, Emily asked for Thai iced coffee. For the most part, it was about the same but, rather than a more subtle tea taste, it had a coffee taste. It was also OK…

Now, here is the reason why I made mention of a printed publication earlier this post. According to Vancouver Magazine’s, Best Things to Eat and Drink – 2009 edition, Pattaya Thai’s prawn and crab roll is the number 1 item. At $10 for four rolls (we ended ordering two orders so everybody in the party had one), these are not cheap and expectations were high. The end result? Epic fail. First of all, if you compare the one we were served compared to the ones served for VanMag, you will see the shrimp tail is barely noticeable, which made me wonder about the shrimp count used here. After breaking it apart, I think I saw one little piece of it. But… But… No crab meat on sight… With a bit of skepticism, I took one bite and the only thing I was able to taste was the cream cheese… Take another bite just to double check. Once again, cream cheese. I am sorry guys… True, the spring roll was well constructed (i.e., retained is shape and it was hot, etc.); however, past that, I don’t think there was anything else positive worth saying to try to justify a $2.50/piece spring roll. Please, do not bring the price issue here. I had $3/piece spring roll at Spices and I thought they were actually good… Moving on to the rest of the menu.

As in my previous trips to Thai restaurants with Victoria, here is a dish she has ordered in the past which I would only order if there was a large group (as, I was certain the others will order the more well known fare): Larb Moo. Compared to the ones I had in Thaitang, they were pretty much the same, though here I did not notice as much pungency. That is when it hit me: Victoria added fish sauce to it. Since we already ate half of it already, I wasn’t sure if asking for it by then would be a great idea. Oddly, most people chose take only token scoops “just to taste” it. I wonder if there was another reason why they didn’t seem too keen on trying it… >_<

Moving on to other dishes, we have two stir fries – Pad Cashew Nuts, the first dish; and Pad Gra Prao, the second dish – and to tell you the truth, either we messed up by ordering dishes with somewhat similar descriptions or there was a lost in translation here. If you took out that cashews from the first dish and the thai basil from the second one, they would end up being your basic stir fry. To composite the problem, I didn’t find anything exciting about them. The one part that I found strange was the “doneness” level of the onions: it still had some bite to it, which indicates they wre not completely cooked through. In fact, some decided to leave the onions aside for that reason.

One somewhat odd dish was the pineapple rice. I call it odd because, well, it is odd! OK, that is no real explanation. Instead, this dish reminded me of eating fried rice with catsup. Feel free to call it wacky but that is what I though: regular fried rice with some sweet overtone thanks to the pineapple finished by some “wetness” provided by a sweet tomato like sauce. Meh in my books…

And then there were the curries. While this group was more adventurous that the group that went to Azia, they were still not willing to go all-in with some dishes. In this case, they asked the curries to be made mild, rather than having it hurt-me-bad spicy hot. As a result, I can’t say I really enjoyed it as some tones were a bit mute but, then, I won’t blame the restaurant for it. While I could live with that, the fact it was more vegetables than the meat was a bit disappointing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not asking for a meat stew; however, when you have to mix it around just to find two or three significant pieces to take a picture, there is something skewed here.

Pad Thai (top) and Pad see iew (bottom). The pad thai was a bit bland, though, once again, I am not sure if it was because we ask for it mild. While the doneness of the rice noodles were good (slightly past al-dente but I can live with that in this dish), I found it a bit uninspiring. At least the pad see iew worked better, as the colour actually translated into some flavour.

And one dish to make it “different”: garlic pork. The best way to describe it would be stir fried pork with some garlic (or garlic sauce) over a bed of cabbage. Nothing too exotic and wished it had more wok hei notes to the pork. It wasn’t bad, just that it wasn’t good either.

While I can give them some slack on some of the dishes because they were asked mild, the execution of the rest of them were… Dubious for the lack of better word. But, my main pet peeve is that of the shrimp crab spring roll which they even have listed in their website and frontpage. If they were making so much fuzz, better be prepared to support it. In this case, the buzz given to them was exaggerated. Overall, there are some opportunities for improvement but given the current choices, Pattaya Thai is far from the top.

As for Vancouver Magazine, tell me guys, was it the same dish??? C’mon, really???? Did we eat the same dish?????

Tagged under: New Westminster • Thai