A few weeks ago, our friend Kevin came to town from Washington to see his family, and we met up with him at a Thai restaurant that promises a “hot and passionate menu.” We noticed Simply Thai a couple of months ago when we visited Cafe Sababa, which is in the space next door, and even after deciding that Erawan has the best Thai cuisine that we’ve ever had, we wanted to sample someplace new. So we went out and fought worse-than-usual traffic – turns out that the whole Perimeter Mall area is nightmarish the week before Christmas, surprise! – and sat down to a pretty good meal with our old pal.
For the most part, we stuck with fairly traditional selections. The girlchild wanted spring rolls, and Marie ordered lemongrass soup, and I had my go-to, Nam Sod. The girlchild and I split an order of something we’d not tried before, crispy chicken “JA JA.” It was a sliced, boneless fillet with tomatoes, pineapple, cucumbers, and a sweet chili sauce. Quite an odd assortment of flavors, but very tasty. Marie also got some fried rice to share with the three year-old. Tragically, he fell asleep in the car (again!), woke incredibly grouchy (again!), and started demanding the white rice from the “JA JA” instead of the fried rice. That was new. Eventually, we elected to spare the other guests any more of his awfulness, and Marie took the kids home.
The service was of that bizarre variety where guests get ambushed before they’ve read one word of the menu, then ask for “just a minute,” then wait another ten minutes to see the server again. My guess is this happens when the server’s about to take a break. Kinda wish they’d say “Hey, I’m clocking out for ten, tell me what you want or wait around for a while.”
The food was fairly standard for American Thai. Everybody was pleased, nothing disappointed. The Nam Sod was much the same as every other Thai place in town. It’s solid comfort food. Anyway, Marie and the kids made their way and Kevin and I just about closed down the place talking about great books that we’ve read lately. (We both love Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which is one of my favorite books of about the last twenty years and which you should definitely read!) It’s good to catch up with old buddies and talk about good books and enjoy good food.
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Marie, Let's Eat! 