A Need to Try Salathai (on Burrard)

As a half-Thai person, I am reeeally picky about my Thai food. As a half-Thai person with an excellent cook for a mother, it’s even worse.  I have yet to find someplace that comes close to the real deal in Thailand, but since I don’t live there, I really have to take what I can get (but please do share if you have any other wisdom here for me).

The best I have found in Vancouver to date is at Salathai Thai Restaurant on Burrard, especially when it comes to their lunch specials menu. (I have other favourites as well that I will share for other particular dishes, but this is the one I have been frequenting the most lately).

Now here are a few of my favourite things from the lunch menu (I think I hear the Sound of Music soundtrack in the background):

Spicy Drunken Noodles (Pad Kee Mao) – This is my longest standing favourite.  This is a newer dish (meaning it’s not an old traditional menu item for Thai food), and ‘kee mao’ basically means that you’re drunk so you just throw whatever is leftover into a pan and cook it all up. This has basil, red peppers and jalapenos, white and green onions, and your choice between chicken, beef or pork. Mmmmmm…I can’t seem to find anywhere else that makes this dish come even close to how good it is at Salathai.

Spicy Drunken Noodle (Pad Kee Mao)

Kwia-Thew Num Ped (what I call Duck Soup) – When it’s a cold, rainy day outside and I need something to warm me up, I often turn to this soup. There is a lot of duck meat, and it’s not overly fatty like a lot of duck can be, along with thin rice noodles, and bean sprouts.  The broth itself is already great as is, and the only thing I usually add when I eat it is a few chillies to spice it up a bit more.

Kwia-Thew Num Ped (Duck Soup)

Yen-Tao-Fo – This is another soup that I really enjoy.  It has more of a tomato based broth, but includes thin rice noodles, spinach, and a mixture of tofu, seafood and pork. For this one, ask for the ‘condiments’ and add a little bit of dried chillies, fish sauce with chillies (prig nam pla), and the vinegar and jalapeno sauce.  Please make sure to do this when you order the yen-tao-fo – it really makes a difference to the overall taste, and very much makes up a part of the flavour experience.

Condiments for Yen-Ta-Fo

Salathai Rice Special – This is a stir-fried rice dish that includes a pan fried egg on top, and has the delicious flavour of Thai basil, green and white onion, and red and green peppers. This one can also be served with the meat of your choice. It also comes with a small appetizer sized soup (although I’m not a huge fan of this, as the veggies in it don’t really give you the right Tom Yum soup taste).

Khow Tang Na Tang – Here is an appy that you can’t find on the online menu for Salathai, but is on their current lunch menu.  Basically, it’s rice ‘chips’ that are crispy and served as almost crackers on which you put a pork and shrimp dip.  It’s very flavourful and delicious and even though I usually am too full to eat both, I’ll order this first before my lunch. I definitely recommend giving this one a try.

Khow Tang Na Tang

And other key dishes I have enjoyed and would recommend:

Tod Man Pla – These are essentially fish cakes that are deep-fried and come with a cucumber salad. A great appy choice.

Larb – This is basically some sort of ground meat – beef, pork or chicken at Salathai – and this comes in a delicious sauce that includes lime, fish sauce, and mint, along with some ground up roasted rice and onions (or you could always make my version of larb at home, which is still my favourite).

Plus, there are a wide variety of curries, noodle dishes – you name it. When thinking back to all of the meals that I’ve had at this place, I can’t recall anything that I didn’t end up liking so far. Here are a couple of others I’ve had recently:

Lard Na

Pad See-Iw

One thing to keep in mind though if you’re going there for lunch – if you aren’t getting a noodle dish or the Salathai rice special, the rest of the dishes (mainly those served over jasmine rice, like the curries), are not all that large.  However, you will definitely enjoy the food and come back again. The other great part – most of the staff there are all Thai, and have the charm of the people from the Land of Smiles.

I’ll continue to update and add pics to this post as I gather more – I frequent this place at least once a week, so it shoudn’t take too long. Just make sure you try the Thai Iced Tea while you’re there. You won’t regret it.

Thai Iced Tea

Salathai Thai Restaurant
102-888 Burrard St.
Vancouver, B.C.
604.683.7999

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A Taste of Azia in Downtown Vancouver

On Friday I went for lunch with several co-workers, and decided to go to a place nearby the office that we hadn’t been to for awhile – Azia – in the Scotiabank Theatre building in downtown Vancouver. I have been a few times now, for both lunches and dinners, and have found that the food is fairly good, but it does depend on what type of dishes you’re ordering.  So today, I’ll run through a variety of what there is to offer so you can decide for yourself if you choose to go there to dine before a movie, or just check it out for a random meal.

At lunchtime, there is a lunch specials menu available which has quite a large selection of items that you can pick, all of which are served with a couple of sides (I believe it was spring rolls and / or perhaps a soup of some type). Unfortunately, I can’t find this anywhere in the lunch section of the current website, and I can’t quite recall the exact options since none of us ordered from this part of the menu (sorry, I may have lost a few brain cells after my company holiday party on Friday night).

I’m lucky to have a lot of co-workers and friends who also enjoy trying a variety of dishes (and are also super patient with my newfound picture taking before eating), so I managed to try quite a few different things.  Our order included the Peking Duck Spring Rolls, the Singapore Laksa, and the Chicken Lettuce Wraps, none of which I’ve had before at this place.

Peking Duck Rolls – These spring rolls were served with hoi sin sauce on the side, and were a bit on the greasy side (a bit of a hazard of eating deep fried fare, but I’ve definitely had other spring rolls that didn’t seem to soak up quite so much oil in the cooking process). I’m also not a big fan of hoi sin sauce, since I find that it can be quite overpowering to the food you’re eating it with, and would’ve been happier with a lighter sweet chilli or plum-type sauce. As a result, I opted out of dipping this at all after the first bite, but still thought they were nothing special (my mother makes the meanest spring rolls you would probably ever taste, so I do feel kind of sorry for any others that I’ve tried).

Singapore Laksa – This spicy curry-based soup was filled with vermicelli noodles, cucumber (a bit soggy), a variety of seafood (some type of white fish and shrimp), tofu, and a hard-boiled egg (always tasty). Compared to others I have had, I found that the broth was not quite thick and rich enough (maybe some coconut milk would help it out?), and had a slightly different taste than I was used to – although I still can’t quite put my finger on why.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps – I found these to be my favourite dish of the day.  Again, these were served with hoi sin sauce on the side to put into the wraps, but after trying it in one, I opted out for the rest.  The chicken and veggie mixture already had enough flavour in it to skip the sauce (I’m not a huge fan of ‘over-saucing’ any food). Besides the fact that the chicken actually looked and tasted a bit like pork (which I still enjoy), the wraps were nice and light and fresh.

There were a variety of other dishes on our table, and the other one I tried was the Beef and Black Bean Sauce Chow Mein.  What I enjoyed about this was there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of black bean sauce over the dish, so you got to enjoy a bit of a different texture as there was still some crunch to some of the chow mein noodles.

Others ordered the Wonton Soup (he gets it every time he goes, so there must be something to it), the Beef Fried Rice Noodles in X.O. Sauce (she ate the whole thing and said she enjoyed it), and the Singapore Noodles (no comment on that one). Although I didn’t try these three items, I thought I’d include the extra pics for your viewing pleasure anyway.

Beef Fried Rice Noodles in X.O. Sauce

Wonton Soup

Singapore Noodles

In the past, other dishes that I’ve tried and enjoyed were the Roti Canai, which is Malaysian bread that comes with a curry sauce to dip it in, and a variety of Japanese and sushi dishes (namely the Ebi Chili Mayo).  I would have to say the Japanese food at Azia is what I’ve liked the most, although I’ve tried other better options in town (see my recent post about Juno).

All in all, this restaurant will provide a wide range of variety in terms of Asian food if you’re feeling indecisive or just want to try many things at once.  The prices of the food seem a bit high overall for the quality that you’re getting, but it gives you a chance to try something a bit different if you’re in the area.

Azia Restaurant & Sushi Bar
990 Smithe Street
Vancouver, BC
604.682.8622

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