Soup, Curry and More c/o Thai Tida

Once Mr. Ass was finished with his responsibilities we gathered ourselves together and began to play a game of Scrabble. Unfortunately I may have gotten us a bit off the topic of Scrabble and the game was never completed. Actually, that may have actually worked out for Mr. Ass's pride in the long run since I had a pretty good chance of getting a bingo. Heh. L. met up with us and then we all went to Thai Tida in Lambertville. While the man at the front was, to put it mildly, a bit less than cordial to us upon our entrance, our servers were quite friendly. I wanted the Tom Yum soup, so I ordered it.
Mr. Ass wanted the sweater shrimp. So he ordered them.
I made a game time decision and went with the green curry with chicken. This dish started at 'medium' and then you could add 'one pepper' 'two peppers' or 'three' for additional spice. I assume these were figurative peppers not literal ones, though I guess it could work either way. I went with one pepper over medium.
L. ordered the duck with three peppers, or maybe two? And Mr. Ass ordered the Drunken Noodles. My dish was definitely spicy, and L.'s spicier than that. I really couldn't take L.'s dish. Yes, there was flavor there and I knew it, but my mouth burned and burned. The drunken noodles were more my style. I guess this is my foodie weakness: an inability to really appreciate food that makes my mouth burn. I mean, I love wasabi, but that's more of a head rush than a slow, neverending burn.
Spiciness aside, it was a good dinner and continued my weekend's eating tour of Asia, you'll see that it continued.

Tom Yum and Steak c/o Trio

Another night, another meal. This time I met up with my new friend G. at Trio. I had the tom yum soup and the steak salad. My sickness shrank my stomach, and made it difficult for me to eat all of either dish (my stomach is far more amenable now that it had four days of all-inclusive food in Jamaica). The soup was good fair with its portion size and number of shrimp. I do love me some lemongrass.
The best part of the salad was, hands down, the steak.

Thai Food, High School Folks and Sing-Alongs in Bucks County

After work on the Tuesday after Memorial Day I drove up to Bucks County to hang with Mr. Ass and JDF and, later, L. We met up in Newtown and picked up the grub before heading back to Mr. Ass's.
We shared Pad Thai, Drunken Noodles, crispy Spring Rolls and some sort of curry.
It was all very good. Mr. Ass will have to remind me of the restaurant's name.
It was a beautiful evening, with properly impressive sunset clouds and swarms of lightning bugs that lit up the grass like some sort of neon carpet LED system.
We climbed up and onto Mr. Ass's garage roof for a better view of the pretty and watched as it flared and flickered into night.
L. arrived and we tried to surprise her by becoming just heads, but she didn't seem very surprised.
Mr. Ass took this photograph.
I took this one.
Later we ate chocolate pot de creme and participated in a short sing-along that warmed my heart. I am not a good singer, but I like to sing nonetheless and sometimes I gain confidence by singing with others...my missed notes perhaps softened by others' abilities to reach them. JDF led us in a song about a prison dog and its love. I think that's what it was about anyways. I sang a few bars of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Under the Bridge and it was all very good.
It was nice to see JDF in person. I think the last time we saw each other was, hmm, Tennessee last year? Since then we have made big, magic plans for some alternate reality in which we buy land in North Carolina and encourage all our nearest and dearest to live on it with us...but the only way to get that sort of plan off the ground is to sing together from time to time...get the magic flowing. I'm not sure we convinced either Mr. Ass or L. to join us, but we sowed the seeds. A lovely evening.

Tom Yum Soup, Mini Spring Rolls, Pad Se Ew & Fire Mouth

For dinner my father and I went to Siam Cuisine. I had a Singha.
We shared mini spring rolls. They were hot and crispy, but not memorable.
Speaking of memorable things. I tried a little of the pepper spiciness in the top jar of the photograph below. I don't know what I was thinking, so boldly going where I had no business going. Oh it burned. Oh my, yes.
Dad ordered the fried cat fish special. I had the pad se ew. Dad's fish was nice and crispy, and he liked the sauce. I enjoyed my noodles, though they weren't as thick as I expected...they were more like real fettucini. I thought that was pretty weird. Or different. I don't know!
Pardon the lack of color correction.

Walkabout Ballard and Thai c/o Thaiku

After breakfast we did something or other, I don't know what exactly...but I'm pretty sure it was relaxing...oh yes, M. and I began a game of Scrabble. It was relaxing...because I was kicking her ass. Ha ha. I am actually not such an asshole when it comes to games except when playing with M. I think. Regardless. J. and I had made plans to see each other in some fashion whilst I was on the west coast, and when kayaking turned out to be too far for her to travel, J. expressed a willingness to drive to Seattle, which she did. We took a walk around the Ballard locks area and saw more pretty plants and flowers.
And the locks themselves were pretty cool. We went and looked at the fish ladders, but it wasn't fish climbing time, so there wasn't a lot to see except murky water. I would love, love, love to see fish flailing their way up a man-made ladder. Perhaps another time.
For lunch we went to a spot J. had been to before, called Thaiku. I wish I could tell you that the entire menu was written in haiku format but, alas, they didn't take it that far. I had a beer.

J. ordered a very cool appetizer, the Mieng Kahm. Which consisted of toasted coconut, chopped ginger, lime, chilis, peanuts etc which you then wrapped up and ate. Very hands-on.
For my main course I thought I'd try something new, so I went with the Kao Moo Dang, Chinese sausage and barbequed pork in a "rich tangy red sauce" with boiled egg and cucumbers as accompaniments. The Chinese sausage was to my liking, and the presentation was good, but the overall flavor wasn't as great.
After lunch we returned to M&A's and sat outside in the sun for a while. Panda looked upon us from on high.

It was great to see J. and I was glad she made the trip. Hope the return drive wasn't too rush hour-y!

Dinner c/o Erawan, Beer c/o Black Sheep

Last week, or the week before that, no, last week, B. came into Philly for a visit. So L., Ak, C. and I met up with her at Erawan for dinner. I have a problem with being places on time but, unlike most with this sort of problem, I end up getting places half an hour early instead of half an hour late. Of the two, I think I prefer my particular problem, but it does often lead to me finding myself somewhere with an awkward amount of time to kill. In this instance I just walked a few more blocks east and then south and then headed back up. Even so, I was still the first person of our party to arrive, so I ordered a Shirley Temple because it was on the menu and it sounded lovely. And it was. Do you see the little heart on the straw? Awwww.
For my meal I ordered the Tom Yum soup and the pork salad. The soup was really great, I've had some strange run-ins with Tom Yum over the years, which has caused me to question my understanding of what should, and should not, be included in the dish.
The salad was great too, a nice mix of texture and flavors...though I would have actually preferred the meat to be a little more dry.
After dinner we walked on over to the Black Sheep and got our drink on for a while.
Sigh.
It was lovely to see B. again, her departure from Philadelphia this summer was sad for our office and for many of our social calendars.
It was a good time. Full of C.'s hardcore hand signals and multiple late comers.

I actually ran into F. and T. in the bar's downstairs space and ended up hanging out with them for a while too. An altogether lovely evening. Thanks, also, to F. and T. for the ride home!

Delivery c/o Trio

Our card playing and beer drinking, to put it simply, ran kind of late, and I was a bit out of commission the next day. I did, however, have to go to work for a bit, but after that I knew my day was going to be some sort of delivery food and a few good movies. I ordered from Trio, because I wanted Thai food and hadn't tried their fare. I ordered their Tom Yum soup and Pad Thai. I know, not very original, but my thought is this: if they can do the basics/inauthentic things in an interesting and satisfying way then it would be worth trying their more exotic/complicated dishes. The soup was quite pleasing, very lemongrass-y. I'm beginning to think that my expectation of straw mushrooms is silly, as the last three places from which I have ordered this soup have all given a button form. Weird.
The Pad Thai was better than my last Thai delivery experience, but not too exciting. It may be that the dish itself is not that exciting and so I should get over it. Ah well.
I keep meaning to do a movie/tv/book round up but it's gotten so long that I can't imagine that I would care about it, let alone anyone else. That said, I watched Away We Go and Unbottled (Uncorked?), and maybe even a third movie that escapes me. Sigh.

Car Waiting Lunch

On Tuesday my mother and I went to Huntsville to get a car. After driving it to make sure the fit was it I had to fill out paperwork. Then the paper work had to be reviewed and approved. There was a bit of a wait for the approval...there was only one guy doing them on that day...so my mother and I went to Surin of Thailand restaurant for lunch. Both of our meals were on the lunch menu and came with complimentary coconut lemongrass soup. The soup was pretty good, though I don't understand the impulse of throwing in a few raw mushroom slices. I'd be happier with straw mushrooms or not mushrooms at all.
My mother had a salad with shrimp and chicken. It had that great sweet rice vinegar sauce that I like so much.
I had some pork dish, the name of which I forget. It claimed to be spicy...but it wasn't. Not too bad, not too good either. They also had sushi but I didn't try it.

Dinner c/o Suporn's

After the zoo we drove back north to Suporn's Restaurant. I've had many a meal with many a person at Suporn's. It's in a funny little set of shops in Wheaton and has been serving tasty food for more than ten years.
All of us, well maybe not the five (four?) year old, had Thai iced tea. I'd never had it before but was definitely pleased when it arrived. Dark red in color and topped with half and half it is super sweet and earthy at the same time.
We shared an order of chicken satay that was, after a number of disappointments in Chicago, quite good. The chicken had a little taste to it, the peanut sauce a little spice etc.
I had the Tom Kha soup. Or Tom Gai Kha. Something like that. Satisfying.
After much internal debate I decided to branch out from noodles or soup and ordered the duck salad. Very pretty to look at and with enough morsels of duck to satisfy me.
Satisfaction is pretty nice, no matter where you might get it.

Appetizers and Curry c/o Beet

On Tuesday night L. and I went to Beet Restaurant for dinner. The decor was an odd mixture of colors and textures. Along the booths, that ran along one whole wall of the narrow space, were small mosaic tiles in varying shades of brown. Then wall painted pink with white swirls further down exposed brick was the backing for the booths. Benches? L. and I both ordered cocktails. I wanted the Limoncello Cooler but our waitress, a less than savvy server, looked blankly when I ordered it then returned shortly thereafter with the news that they didn't have it. I ordered something else instead. It had puree and sake and vodka and lychee...I didn't like it. For all the sweet ingredients in its description the overall taste I had in my mouth was sharp and alcoholly. The bite of vodka mixed with something wrong. We ordered two appetizers. The Jeep Thai Dumplings (I think that's what they were called) and the spring rolls. The dumplings were a bit like shiu mai (or however you spell it...the dumplings at dim sum) with chicken and pork and maybe shrimp. They weren't quite it. The spring rolls were satisfying, crunchy and hot and with real taste to their filling. And how I love me some dipping sauce.
I ordered the green curry with chicken. L. ordered shrimp crusted turbot with a lobster curry sauce. Both of our dishes were spicy. Not too spicy, just spicy so you felt it. We both commented on how refreshing it was to see a hot pepper by a dish's menu description and to have the food truly reflect the pepper...if you know what I mean. There were the most tender lovely little eggplant chunks in my curry that I liked very much. L. let me have a taste of her turbot and it was excellent.
The pink lights and the reflection of the pink wall made it difficult to take photographs without a pink cast to it...so the flash was utilized. I'm thinking this camera may soon be making its way to its end. Thank you to L. for the meal and the company. After not seeing her all that often in the last five years it has been so awesome to see her twice in less than 2 months.