Safe for tender tongues, pepper palates
By Frank Sabatini Jr | SDUN Food Critic
Vegetarians, carnivores, tender tongues and pepper palates alike will appreciate Thai Joints’ offerings—everything from mild Thai samosas (not much different than their Ethiopian and northern Indian cousins) to zesty Atlantic salmon dressed in chili-garlic sauce, meat-laden wok fries and curry dishes. There is also Thailand’s eminent green papaya salad, Som Tom, a feisty, high-flying level 7 with plenty of devilish red chilies lurking within its dazzling lime-peanut dressing.
On the munchies list, the aforementioned samosas hold whispers of Five Spice augmenting mashed fillings of yellow-curried potatoes, peas and carrots. A titillating Tabasco-soy sauce is served alongside. The casings are notably greaseless, and a platter of eight costs only $4.99.
The “Afro shrimp” appetizer is a showstopper, especially when the presentation passes through the quaint dining room that cozily embraces about 10 couples. (Tables can be pushed together for foursomes and larger groupings.) The dish includes six skewers sticking upright from a halved onion, each spearing a single shrimp wildly entangled in fried egg noodles. A clever sauce tasting of chilies and orange zest harmoniously heightens the stand-out flavor.
Soups arrive in a metal moat with a Sterno flame in the center. The Tom Kah variety comes with a choice of chicken, shrimp, veggies or tofu. We chose the latter, which was soft, luscious and as addictive as the fragrant, if thin, broth’s coconut milk, lemon grass and gingery galangal. My companion requested Thai chili sauce on the side to crank up the heat, and I didn’t protest.
Until eating at Thai Joint, I’d never met a piece of mock duck that I liked. We ordered it with “spicy noodles” strewn with basil, onions, tomatoes and bell peppers—similar to pad Thai sans the beans sprouts and crushed peanuts. The “duck” was chunky, dark in color, moist and moderately convincing in flavor and texture. If only the manufacturers of faux fowl could find a way to replicate the savory prized skin.
Aficionados of Thai cuisine on the hunt for something novel should look no further than the spicy basil pumpkin bowl, which imparts a red-curry soaking to the fleshy autumn fruit without obliterating its nutty, creamy pith. It’s quite wonderful and you’ll be hard-pressed to find the dish in other Thai restaurants.
Complementing our mostly vegetarian feast, we ordered real chicken in garlic-pepper sauce from the menu’s “wok this way” category. It featured soy-glazed breast meat encircled by plain, steamed broccoli that perked up significantly as it merged with the sauce and chopped green onions in the stir fry. A few dabs of the aforementioned chili sauce raised the zing to our exact liking.
Service was exceptionally efficient and polite. Tea candles were lit promptly at sunset. Silverware was replaced between courses without fail. And when our waitress detected a wobble in our table, she was quick to insert stabilizers under the legs. For a place that calls itself “a joint,” the dining experience exceeds
expectations.
