Royal City Thai

Royal City Thai
634 Columbia Street
New Westminster, BC

The first time we met Karl (of The Friday Lunch) was at the bò 7 món (beef seven ways) in Thai Hang. Being the good fellow blogger he is, when he was aware of a new Thai restaurant in New Westminster, he decided to check with Jessica, Sherman and myself if we wanted to give it a try. Hey, food? I am there!

Aside from it being in New Westminster, in my opinion, a place that can have good eats but you must know where to look (Burger Burger, Burger Heaven, Ki Sushi, et al), it was the fact they offer buffet lunch on Saturdays and Sundays. What?! All-you-can-eat? In a way, this is the first time I heard of a Thai restaurant offering this so I was curious as well.

When we arrived, there was something “not right” about the buffet part: there wasn’t any hot plates outside! Instead, we found out they prepare each individual dish you order. I am certain this generates a lot of overhead; however, from a customer perspective, at least that provides some guarantee the food will be fresh. Once all of us arrived, we made one thing that we never thought we would do in a restaurant: we ordered everything (literally) in the menu! Given that there were 5 of us (plus Sherman’s little daughter), we were sure we would be able to tackle that easily there 15 dishes available. And, we started with…

(Sidenote, Sherman and I make a swap here: all the food pictures below were taken with *his* Canon XSi. If some pictures look strange/different/odd, that is because I was in the process of changing camera settings.)

Tom Kah Gai – hot and sour soup with coconut milk, galanga, lemon grass and mushroom. Gai (chicken). Now, I am not a Thai food expert but I am sure this is your normal Tom Yum soup, given the comparison between the description and what was served. This is because I don’t think there was any coconut milk at all, instead the pungency I am more used to in the tom yum. Regardless, it was an interesting way to start off things.

They have a set of appetizers type dishes and this is their calamari. I wished they were using smaller ones rather than these. That is because I prefer the crunchy tentacle side rather than the ring side. Regardless, these were not cooked fine without any hint of it being rubbery. Unfortunately, I wished they added something (herbs, spices, et al) to the flour mixed they used before frying them, as it was a bit on the bland side.

Spring rolls. These were quite interesting, as they were quite well packed. It had a mix of noodles, cabbage and carrots, which works fine. Not necessarily the best but workable.

There is one additional dish we also had but it seems I don’t have a picture of it and that was the chicken wings. They were better seasoned than the calamari and well fried. It was quite good to the point we ordered a second (big) plate!

I guess they had to have some salad and this is their dish. It was decent but, given it is just putting some raw vegetables together, and some dressing, that is all I can say.

Since the curries can be ordered in three types – yellow, red and green – plus different types of meats – pork, beef, chicken or mixed veggies – I will admit that I got confused with the three. For some reason, some of the characteristics of some of the curries didn’t really develop, like the sweetness and spiciness of the green, the creaminess of the yellow and so on. Now, I liked them, just that, colour aside, I had problems telling them apart from a taste perspective. The collective thought was that, to try to satisfy the masses, they dumbed down them a little bit which resulted in similar dishes.

Pad Bai Grapao (basil) or Pad Khing (ginger), again with the same option of chicken, pork or beef for meat. Probably because I wasn’t paying attention, I don’t recall if it was one or the other (or I didn’t take a picture of the “other”). My best guess is that this is the pad bai grapao given it had basil in it. I will have to say this is almost your standard stir-fry, though they did manage to cook the meat very well, aka, certain degree of wok hei – the meat was caramelized yet it was still tender.

Chili Pepper Fried Rice with vegetables and egg. Not sure about the egg part but there was vegetables. Now, I thought it was odd baby corn and cabbage out of all possible veggies. I guess cost might be an issue here. Regardless, there wasn’t that much of egg I could tell but I liked how the rice was able to retain the shape. It wasn’t bad but, then again, it is fried rice…

Sorry, I took this picture after it was, ahem, “attacked”. Here we have Gai Pad Namman – boneless chicken with seasonal vegetable, pineapple and black bean sauce. Once again, similar to the Pad Bai Grapao/Pad Khing mentioned above, this was your regular stir fry, though the sweetness of the pineapple was odd.

Pad See-Iew. Now, there is reason why there are two pictures here: in the second “round” we asked to kick it up a notch and asked for them to make it extra spicy. Hence, the reason the second picture has some chili peppers in it. It was when I was eating the second version that I finally started to sweat a little bit! Regardless, I thought these crunchy vegetables didn’t work with the rice noodles as well as leafy vegetables. But, then again, it is the issue of cost…

Similar to what happened to the chicken wings above, there is (at least?) one more dish that I don’t think I took a picture of and that might have been the mixed season vegetables. If that was the case or not, it does not matter that much as I don’t it made that much of an impression. And just when we thought we over did it, “dessert” came…

In the form of Coconut Tapioca. For a moment, we all thought this will be a cold version (similar to mango tapioca) but, surprise, it was hot version! It wasn’t that sweet but served to finished the meal.

In perspective, I believe the restaurant went quite far by providing a buffet menu of this type, specially by cooking the (small) dishes individually. Some defaults decisions taken were a bit odd until we actually requested them to be made differently (i.e., the spiciness level). However, again, that was probably because they want to attract the masses. If it was located in next neighbour Burnaby or, hell, Vancouver, the food will be subpar but, considering this is New Westminster, it is actually a decent option. As for myself, if I am back, I will go for a la carte rather than the buffet. Sure, it gives better options, just that, several of them didn’t really work for me.

Tagged under: New Westminster • Thai