Thai Kitchen

Restaurant: Thai Kitchen

Cuisine: Chinese/Thai/Asian (More Chinese)
Last visited: November 8, 09
Area: Richmond, BC
Unit 160 - 8180 No. 2 Road (No. 2 & Blundell)
Price Range: $10-20

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 2.5
Service: 2
Ambiance: 2
Overall: 2
Additional comments:

• Chinese (MAYBE Chinese-Thai) family owned and operated
• Attracts white people
  
• Homecooked/homestyle
• Chinese style Thai food
• Fresh use of vegetables
• No fresh limes
  
• Affordable
  
• Lunch specials $6.95
• Free delivery $20+
• 11am-10pm everyday
• Dine in/Take-out
  

**Recommendation: Thai Green Curry

Tucked in the corner of a the Blundell Plaza mall is Thai Kitchen. It looks like a Chinese restaurant catered to "White folk" and pretty much is...with a slight hint of Thai. The owners are Chinese, maybe Chinese-Thai...but I'm pretty sure just Chinese.

How and why can I make these assumptions?

1) The owners speak Mandarin-Chinese to each other and look Chinese
2) The menu is in English and Chinese...no Thai anywhere
3) Menu has lettuce wraps, ginger beef, and sweet and sour chicken - typical Chinese-American dishes
4) The menu had no "larb"- an authentic Thai dish, and when I asked about it they had no idea what I was talking about.

At this point I was really hesitant. Needless to say the food is quite Chinese and so are the flavours. It tastes very average (except for the Thai green curry which was great), but the food is just not authentic Thai. All the diners that evening were White and their regulars too.

The items our server/the owner recommended were "Western-Chinese dishes" like Ginger Beef, Pad Thai, and Cashew Chicken. The only thing that I really wanted to try that seemed authentic Thai and haven't seen at other Thai restaurants was the Thai Crispy Pancakes. However when I tried to order them our server told us they were no longer available. It was a rough start. I had to pry her to get the "authentic" dishes or to tell us what she would order...I took her recommendations and the rest is well... "on the table" :) ohh...good one!

On the table:

• Thai Style Papaya Salad 1/6
• Thai style salad with papaya, tomatoes, sun-dried shrimps, peanuts, spices and lime dressing $8.95

• I've ordered this before at other Thai restaurants, and this one was just not good.
  
• It's a Thai salad made with shredded green papaya and it tastes more like daikon than papaya. It has a very neutral taste and it's very crunchy. I usually enjoy this salad, just not here.
• We had zero dried shrimps in our salad. I didn't even know it was supposed to have dried shrimp until re-reading the menu just now. They must have forgotten because there was none.
• The dressing was way too pickled/sour tasting. There was no balance of sweet/savoury/tangy. It was pretty much bottled lime juice + fish sauce. The fish sauce wasn't a good quality and mixing it with bottled lime juice just made the salad taste off. There were no spices or fresh herbs either. They overcharge you for the size you get too.
• **Thai Green Curry 4/6
  
• Served with the choice of chicken, beef, pork, or vegetarian $9.95
• Served with the choice of prawns, or mixed seafood $12.95

• We ordered it with chicken and it came with lots of boneless chicken breast, some eggplant (wish there was more) and lots of fresh green, yellow and orange bell peppers. There was a couple basil leaves in there too.
• The green curry was a coconut milk based curry and it's not as green as some other places. The curry starts off tasting sweet and gets nice and spicy right after which gives me the hope that they actually made their curry paste rather than buy it. I don't know though...it's debatable. Regardless it tastes good, and I'd order it again...only out of convenience.

• Stir-fried Noodles 2.5/6
  
• Stir-fried rice noodles with the choice of chicken, beef, or pork $9.95

• We ordered it with chicken again. It was a huge plate of noodles stir-fried with lots of fresh broccoli, lots of chicken, onions, celery, bean sprouts and lots of green, yellow and orange bell peppers.
• Normally I would never order this item because it sounds so ordinary and typical, but she recommended it. She suggested "Pad Thai" at first and when I asked what she would order she said "stir-fried noodles".
• It tasted almost like chicken chow mien, but instead with rice noodles. It was really just ok, a bit dry. I gave it a 2.5 because they used a lot of fresh vegetables and lots of big pieces of chicken breast. I think they used almost half a head of broccoli and there was so much bell pepper so I appreciated those things. It wasn't stir-fried very well though. The noodles at the bottom was just a giant clump of noodles.
• Steamed Coconut Milk Rice $1.75