the road to khao san road
my ellesy eats blog hasn't featured a lot of eats lately. that's why i've decided to write a little bit about a new food obsession of mine. thai cuisine. or more specifically, tom yum soup. or more specifically, that delicious tangy-hot-sweet-salty-sour flavour that makes my mouth water as i type this. that's right folks, i'm drooling all over myself this very instant.
the obsession started in the oddest of places - in maui last year at wok star international noodle cafe. yes, can you imagine, this is where we ate our first night in maui. i ordered some noodle dish that i can no longer remember. vince ordered the thai coconut chicken soup. i was like, really? umm it doesn't even have noodles... it doesn't sound very yummy. but baby was i burned because it was SOUPER delicious! i tried a tentative sip and i was hooked. i didn't want to admit it so i kept dipping my spoon in under the pretense of trying to identify the ingredients. the complex flavours were doing a veritable tango on my tongue. or maybe it was the merengue.
yup, the simple, unassuming soup (on the right in the above image) was so jam-packed with flavour! gaaah i kept craving that soup but we only had it on one other occasion during our trip. every time we were deciding on a place to eat, i would say, how about thai soup? or rather, thaaaaaaaaaai shooooooooop? he would roll his eyes because, oddly enough, he wasn't crazy about the soup himself.
when we got back to toronto, we started ordering thai food every week - no soups just curries and some pad thai every now and then. whenever i was hungry, i would gravitate toward any kind of thai noodle soup within a 30 minute walk away. it was all decently tasty but nothing that made my tastebuds dance in the same way as that darling maui soup... and slowly my obsession waned.
the week before we left for las vegas, i walked by a new mystery restaurant on adelaide street, right outside tinkle. there was no sign but i saw two girls confused outside so that immediately caught my attention. they checked the street number and then went in. i saw large communal tables and was intrigued. i went home and googled new restaurant on adelaide. nothing. i checked chowhound doing many combinations of searches and finally there it was. khao san road. it was supposed to be good too.
immediately i told vince we were going there the next night. but when we went, it was jam packed and we were way too hungry to wait for a table so we went instead to ravi soups. i was disappointed but we had plans for thai food in vegas so i put it out of my mind.
which brings me to lotus of siam. oh dear lord, the reviews did not lie. some wicked thai food was to be had in a strip mall north-east of the vegas strip. we ate there twice and the tom yum kai soup was to die for. let me repeat... to. die. for. i loved the fiery spiciness of the food. the lemony goodness. the mouthwateringly diviness.
there was a long wait for a table and our schedule didn't allow for us to make (and keep) reservations on short notice so we got take-out both times and drove back to our hotel room to eat. as much as i enjoy dressing up and having a nice meal out, i gotta admit, i lovelovelove eating takeaway in my pjs! we ordered just enough to fill us up since we didn't want to contend with leftovers.
the first time, we ordered:
- tom yum kai soup
- pad thai
- panang curry
the second time, we ordered:
- tom yum kai soup
- garlic chicken wings
- khao soi (my favourite!)
we returned to a snowy toronto and i lamented the lack of yummilicious tom yum soup within arm's reach away. what a life, eh? then as i walked home each day, i slowly remembered that we still had to try the new thai place. i kept eyeing all the people inside even before 6 p.m. every night and thought to myself that i had to at least try it to see what all the fuss was about... even if soup does not feature heavily on the menu (the only choice is the soup of the day). so i made a reservation. and we went. and the soup of the day was tom yum soup. and it was AMAZING.
we ordered:
- cup of tom yum soup
- garlic shrimp (YUM!)
- gaeng phed or red curry
- sam roas pad thai
- two tall glasses of chai yen
the portion sizes were just right but we still had a little leftover to take home with us. :)