It was the second Tuesday in as many weeks in which my works-downtown-friend and I failed to locate Guanaco Food Truck to use my VanEats GuanaCombo Dining Passes. Last week they had moved from their usual Seymour and Georgia (probably because of all the construction there) and we ended up at Finest At Sea. Yesterday, they weren't even downtown at all, and we ended up going to Khai Thai Cuisine because it was nearby and my friend was on the clock as she had a strict lunch hour.
One of the nice things about this restaurant is the interior. Looks sort of lousy on the outside, especially now that it is right next door to the shiny new-ish Dunn's Famous. However, inside it's bright yet cosy, and the table spacing isn't too packed. We were in at just around Noon, which turned out to be about fifteen minutes before a lunch rush that saw the place packed.
As mentioned, we were on the clock, but the restaurant said a quick lunch was no problem, and in fact we were out at just around 12:30 pm after two dishes.
I'd normally have taken more time to peruse the extensive Chinese-restaurant-like menu of about 100 items, but this time around I just went with the first curious thing that caught my eye: "Angel Wings". My friend chose a safe and familiar Pad Thai.
- Angel Wings ($8.95) - "Deep fried boneless chicken stuffs served w/ Thai Sauce"
- This was just two chicken wings -- wing plus wingtip. The wing portion had been emptied out and filled with a very firm, almost hard, mix of possibly white chicken meat and vermicelli.
- It is my opinion that when you scoop out the meat from something and replace it with filling, the end result needs to be better than simply having eaten the meat. So whatever filling was put in these Angel Wings before deep frying had to make them better than deep fried chicken wings. It was so not the case here. The result was also dry and bland. "Wooden" would be a pretty good word. We're talking on par with supermarket frozen slider burger patties made with barely any recognizable real meat.
- Two wings per order works out to basically $4.50 a piece. Compare one plate of this at $8.95 with 1 pound of interesting chicken wings from Wings on Granville at $8.18 and you can understand how disappointed I was.
- Pad Thai ($9.95 or $11.95) - "Stir-fried Rice noodle w/ Egg, Bean sprout served w/ Ground peanut w/ the Choice of Tofu / Chicken / Beef or Pork / Tiger Prawn"
- It's $11.95 with Tiger Prawn, $9.95 otherwise.
- My friend went with chicken. It was really firm white (breast meat?). A bit wooden.
- Nothing spicy here despite the flecks of chili here and there -- which is ironic because the menu brochure for the restaurant reads "authentic thai cuisine, spicy choice". It was actually a bit sweet.
- There was a faint heat to it, leading to a slight buzz in the mouth, as we neared the last of t he noodles. It's possible that whatever they used had somehow made its way to the bottom.
- Nothing wow here, and combined with too-firm chicken, I'd say give this a pass and get your pad thai elsewhere.
Although our lunch was at best lacklustre, I should reiterate that there was a lunch rush that saw the place filled, so there's probably something to the food here. Just not the Pad Thai (unless they forgot to ask if we wanted it spicy, maybe, or because they rushed it because we were in a hurry), and definitely not the Angel Wings.
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