Taiwanese Thai Cuisine – Thai Town

Its been a few days since I’ve been back in Taiwan, and my dad decided to take me and my cousin to a Thai place.  I’m kind of dubious of the authenticity of their “Thai” dishes, but it was good food nonetheless.

Shrimp sauce stir-fried Chinese spinach

"Moon" shrimp pancake

The Chinese spinach was really good. I really liked the shrimp sauce they put on it, or whatever it is. But I love Chinese spinach with or without the shrimp sauce, so maybe I’m a little biased there. I’m not sure if the shrimp pancakes are actually part of Thai cuisine. They’re always offered at Thai restaurants in Taiwan, but I’m a little suspicious of their origins. Anyway, these pancakes are basically shrimp meat in a batter and fried such that the outside is crispy. Its usually accompanied by a sweet and sour sauce, and it tastes amazing right out of the kitchen.

Chicken curry

Lemon Fish

The chicken curry (its mostly gone… I was too hungry to take a pic of it before eating) I didn’t have very much of. But I think although they got the coconut milk part right, it wasn’t really the right spices, or something. It tastes different from the curry I’ve had in Pittsburgh. Its definitely not as fragrant, which was disappointing. The lemon fish was okay. I’m not a big fan of fish, but the combination of lemon and parsley was actually pretty good.

Dessert - Shaved ice

Most of the "toppings" were underneath

My favorite was the dessert: shaved ice, Thai styled.  I don’t actually know what goes into this dish.  I believe they use a lot of canned fruits that are local to Thailand, and so all the fruits tend to have a similar chewy/rubbery texture and is extremely sweet.  They also add coconut milk to it, and I really like it.  The only problem is that I’m not sure what I’m actually eating.

I think Thai cuisine in Taiwan is okay.  Its not amazing; I wouldn’t come back to Taiwan just to eat it, but it was definitely an enjoyable meal.

Smiling Banana Leaf part 2

Smiling Banana Leaf again!  My friend really likes Asian food, and so we came back again a second time (and third, but I wont’ post about that).  This time coming in we noticed that the waitress might be a transvestite…??? Not that it really matters to the food we’re served, but it was something we were discussing over lunch.  Anyway, this time we came back for lunch, and I ordered Green Curry and my friend ordered Pad Thai.

With the Green Curry, I specified brown rice instead of the normal Jasmine rice, and to my surprise the brown rice was purple.  I think this might be a Southeast Asian thing, because I’ve never seen purple brown rice in Taiwan before.  The brown rice in Taiwan is… well, I’ve never had brown rice in Taiwan, but the kind I buy its, well, brown (sort of an ivory color I suppose).  At first I thought it was purple sweet/glutinous rice, but it wasn’t.  Anyway, the lunch portions are slightly smaller (less stuff in the curry), but also a few dollars cheaper.  I liked the green curry, but honestly curry tastes all the same to me, so I can’t say how it really compares to the red curry.  I got the Penang Curry the 3rd time I went, and I compared it to the Red Curry (which my friend ordered) and the Penang Curry is sweeter I believe.  I can’t really distinguish the three curries, but either way they were all amazing haha.  The pork is, as usual, tender and flavorful.  I didn’t think it had an excess amount of fat, which is good.  Their curries are definitely very enjoyable dishes and I would recommend it to anyone that likes curry.

My friend ordered Pad Thai, another tradition Thai dish.  This is probably the most authentic Thai food I will get (since the restaurant owners are Thai).  It had a very strong peanut flavor to it, and overall sweeter than I expected.  I only had one bite, but it was very, very delicious.

Green Curry with Brown Rice

Pad Thai with Chicken

 

Smiling Banana Leaf

Smiling Banana Leaf! This small but amazing Thai restaurant is tucked away in Highland Park, which is hard to get to without a car.  As a result, I haven’t heard of this place from any of my college friends.  Rather, it was a graduate student who told my friend about the place, and so two nights ago we went to have dinner there.

The restaurant was very small, but thankfully not very crowded like Point Brugge Cafe.  Their menu included noodles, fried rice, curries, and so on.  Both me and my friend got the red curry.  It comes with a bowl of rice.  Apparently they also had purple glutinous rice (which I love) but we didn’t get it because I didn’t know about it until the customers beside us ordered it.  The next time I go I’m gonna order that =X

Anyway, pics from dinner…

Red Curry with Pork and Rice

They allowed us to choose spiciness, from 1-10.  I of course wanted a 10 and it wasn’t that spicy at all.  They definitely gave a lot of curry.  My friend easily ate 2 bowls of rice for the amount of curry they gave.  It was very, very good.  I’m not sure if I like the bamboo in it though.  It was kind of over cooked (probably because it was canned bamboo or something), and the peas and carrots made it seem like they used some frozen vegetable blend, which didn’t go well with the curry.  But the pork soaked up the smell of the spices really well, and overall the curry was just really amazing with the rice.  I can’t wait to come back again and to try some of their other dishes!