Category Archives: Thai

February 2, 2012 · 8:18 pm

Sea Thai

First thing is first. Today’s my Dad’s birthday! Happy birthday, Daddy!

DSCN2806

Last night, Kevin and I met up with Kevin’s childhood friend, Ben, who even published a book inspired by their hometown. I was in the mood to try a new restaurant, so we went to Sea Thai, since I kept seeing them pop up in “Best of Orlando” lists in the Thai category.

Everyone else must have had the same idea because the place was pretty crowded for a Wednesday evening. I’m not sure if they’re quite used to their recent fame because our service was a little spotty. It took quite awhile for us to be seated (not because people we were waiting but because everyone was preoccupied). We also were sitting awhile before anyone came to take our drink order.

We decided to start with an order of their summer rolls because Ben and I share a love of peanut sauce, but they had sold out. Instead, we opted for vegetable spring rolls with dripping plum sauce. I’m not quite sure what a dripping plum is, but the sauce was sweet and tasted a lot like duck sauce, which I love. Next time I’m showing up early for summer rolls.

spring rolls

For my main dish, I ordered panang curry with tofu.

panang curry

The curry was delicious. It came with a side of rice, which I promptly dumped into the bowl of curry, which already contained mushrooms, snap peas, onions and peppers, to soak up all the sauce. Even after I ate all the rice, tofu and veggies, I was left with a pool of sauce. I seriously contemplated drinking it but resisted the urge.

Kevin ordered chicken fried rice, and Ben ordered shrimp pad Thai.

chicken fried rice

pad thai

Both seemed to really enjoy their meals. I stole some of Kevin’s veggies to dip into my endless bowl of curry.

The food at Sea Thai is very good, but the service was very slow. There were many times when drinks went empty for awhile, and it took a very long time to order food and then a long time to wait for the food.

Luckily, the company was good so the time was well spent chatting. Plus the food was really good. I’m really glad we were able to try Sea Thai. I would have been a lot more frustrated if the food didn’t end up being delicious.

Do you have any bad restaurant service stories to share?

13 Comments

Filed under Mills50, Thai

November 16, 2011 · 7:10 pm

Thai Cafe

Yesterday’s lunch featured my eternal life debate: pad Thai or curry? I love Thai food—lately, even more  so than sushi, which is huge. It’s so hard for me to choose between pad Thai and curry, and I always leave wanting the other. Both are so delicious.

My friend Katie introduced me to a Thai place I hadn’t been to called Thai Café in downtown Orlando. It’s a hole-in-the-wall place with not very many tables and not a lot of pizazz. They don’t even have a website.

The place was simple and unassuming, but the food tasted just as good as any other Thai place I have been to. Everything had a lot of traditional flavors, and the prices were extremely reasonable.

We started out with an order of summer rolls because all Thai meals should start with peanut sauce.

summer rolls

They have daily specials, which I took advantage of. One of their specials was the yellow curry, which as a part of the special came with spring rolls and ginger salad.

spring rolls

The spring rolls were good but were nothing compared to the summer rolls. I just adore summer rolls.

ginger salad

yellow curry

I chose tofu as my protein with my curry, and I was pleased that there was plenty of tofu throughout. The curry was very good, although a little milder in seasonings than other curries I’ve had. That didn’t stop me from cleaning my plate. I love when the rice soaks up all the curry sauce.

Katie ordered Penang curry with chicken.

panang curry

I was stuffed well into the evening after our filling lunch.

Summer rolls or spring rolls?

18 Comments

Filed under Downtown Orlando, Thai

August 26, 2011 · 7:26 pm

Napasorn

If you haven’t done so, don’t forget to enter my stainless steel straws giveaway!

I was expecting Hurricane Irene to rain on my lunch parade today, but we made it through the day with no storms in downtown Orlando. My friend Katie and I grabbed lunch at Napasorn Thai Restaurant downtown on Pine Street. I adore Thai food.

When we walked into Napasorn, it was packed. We were actually seated at the bar because all of the tables were taken. It must be a popular workweek lunch destination, especially on Fridays.

We started out with ginger salads, soft rolls (what they call their spring rolls) and cheese roll crisps.

salad

soft rolls

cheese roll crisp

The ginger salad was your typical Asian salad, and the ginger salad dressing was nice and chunky. Their summer rolls had plenty of shrimp and were really good and refreshing. I also really enjoyed the cheese rolls, which also had shrimp and cream cheese on the inside and was served with a plum dipping sauce. It tasted almost like crab ragoon.

It was a good thing we loaded up on appetizers because it took more than an hour for our main courses to come out. Our waitress explained that the kitchen got slammed all at once. I looked around the restaurant and not one table had their food the whole time we were waiting for ours.

Finally all of the food came out at once to everyone in the restaurant, and the food was definitely hot. You could tell it was coming straight off the stove, running out the kitchen to the tables.

I ordered the tofu pad Thai, which was delicious. It actually ended up being one of the best pad Thais I’ve ever had.

pad thai

The sauce coating the noodles was delicious, and you can choose how spicy you’d like it. I got it at a medium heat, which was perfect. The only problem was I scoffed it down quicker than I should have. It took so long for the food to get out that I really felt like I needed to get back to the office, so I pretty much inhaled the plate. I don’t know if I even came up for air.

Katie ordered panang curry with chicken, and she said it was her new favorite thing on their menu. It smelled really delicious.

panang curry

I was appreciative of the extra time Katie and I got to spend catching up, but  I definitely can’t be taking two hour lunches every day. I was disappointed in the speed that the food came out, but I also felt bad for the waitress because she was sort of the face of the issue, even though it was a problem in the kitchen.

Do you like spicy foods? I usually like a little bit of spice, but I can’t handle too much. Ordering things at a “medium” is perfect.

What’s the longest you’ve ever had to wait at a restaurant for food? I felt like I was on Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares!

7 Comments

Filed under Asian, Downtown Orlando, Thai

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