It's a chilly, damp Friday night. I'm just finishing work and the SO is picking me up as we made a last minute after work decision to pop on by the SOMA StrEat Food Park because we are lazy didn't want to cook or order in anything. It's a sparse crowd, but it is early on a Friday night, they are open late and I'm sure hungry drunksters will be by later. The choice of food trucks on this night also seem to be limited as most we see we have eaten at already. The SO gravitates toward one and when I look, I realize it is Khao San Thai Food. Ugh, me and Thai food have a love hate relationship. I enjoy that it's spicy and comes with veggies, I hate that it is pricey and the portions seem really small to me. But I feel in an adventurous mood and decide to go with it anyway since I haven't tried these folks before and want to keep an open mind.
Another thing about Thai I'm not a fan of is the coconut based curries. Hard to explain, but coconut is just one of those flavors and textures I can't appreciate. Not something I'll order, even on a dessert. The SO knows this and I decided to let them pick the dishes, going on faith they wouldn't let me down.
I believe this is what they call pad prid khing--stir fried string beans, peppers and chicken with kaffir lime leaves. Good choice for me as there is no coconut and it is more of a brown gravy like sauce. In round about terms it was fine. It comes across as just a basic stir fry dish, nothing really special. Can't say I got any essence or flavor from the lime leaves. We had asked for spicy but for Thai food it was a little light on that. It was more like a small tickle on the tonsil as opposed to wow that's got some kick! It was one of those dishes I was okay eating in the moment, but if you ask me later how it was, I'd probably be hard pressed to remember. And living up (or down) to my expectations, this wasn't a big serving. The picture is an extreme close up and there was a lot of sticky rice. Usually when you order in Chinese food there always seems to be extra you can make a lunch out of the next day, not with Thai food. Kind of a one and done.
This was the pad Thai--pan fried noodles with ground peanuts, bean spouts, onions, chili sauce, green onions, chicken and their homemade pad Thai sauce. (the menu said there was also egg in here but I'm pretty sure they left that out) The sauce seemed a little light to mostly not there on this. I was expecting notes of lime and possibly tamarind but we only got lime after we squeezed the one in the picture over everything. Bean sprouts and carrots weren't actually cooked they were added as a side. The only heat you are get here is the chili sauce you see in the back corner. Thanks for that, other wise, there really wasn't much flavor going on here. The double edged sword of eating out, sometimes you come across dishes you feel you could have tossed together yourself, if you had a mind too. Again, it was a dish I was like, eh, it's fine, and still no leftovers.
Eating at Khao San Thai Food Truck didn't change my mind any about Thai food. At roughly $10 a pop, the above dishes weren't all that large or all that exciting. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there is some special way to order I don't know about. Maybe I'm just not trying the right places. Maybe I'm not trying the right dishes. Or maybe Thai food is what it is, and as long as it remains that, I'll continue to love/hate it and just get something else.
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