So sad…

Yes, I feel so sad that this place is going to wrap up business in a few days’ time…

I went there with Melissa a long long time ago in 2009 and she even blogged about it here (she’s no longer active though and her blog has been redundant for a long time now) but it was a very dark place with colourful lights and it came across like some kind of not-very-respectable girlie bar and the fact that there were booths made it seem even more so.  I remember I had to sit at a table by the window and pull back the curtain so I could take some decent photographs of the food! To cut a long story short, I did not like the place and the food wasn’t good enough to get me going back for more.

Then some people that I know took over and I went back there again. The food was all right but they did not do anything to spruce up the place and after having gone there twice – here and here, we did not get to go back there again. Not long after that, as I was driving past, I saw that they had closed down the place and were doing some major renovations but when it reopened, somehow or other, I never dropped by.

I did not even know that they had converted it into a Thai restaurant until that day, when I was ranting about the horrendous new Thai restaurant in town on Facebook and a friend of mine commented on that status of mine and suggested that I went to this place instead to give it a try. All he said was that there was a Thai lady chef there, nothing more and since he did not seem all that enthusiastic, I just dilly-dallied and never got round to dropping by until one day, in a comment on Facebook, he said that I should go soon as the Thai lady chef would be leaving. Still, there was no hint as to how really good the food was…but anyhow, last Sunday, after the service at the cathedral in town, we stopped by for lunch.

The place is very much smaller now but a whole lot nicer…

…and brighter…

…though somehow, it did come across to me as being rather clinically white and clean, a far cry from that dingy place that it was before.

I was feeling kind of sceptical as there wasn’t a living soul around. Surely if the food had been good, there would be some business at least…even on a very slow day but since we were already there, I thought we might as well sit down and order something – after all, this place would not be around much longer and don’t say that we did not give it a try.

I ordered the bread cakes, prawn (RM10 for 10 pieces) – the ka-nam pung na-goong…

…but I think I ordered the wrong thing. My friend said that I must ask for the prawn cake and if I’m not wrong, that would be the tord mun-goong (deep fried fresh prawn cake) but it did not matter as this was so very nice too. I liked the fact that it was not oily at all even though it was deep fried…unlike the spring rolls that we had at that other Thai place. Tsk! Tsk!

Of course, we had to order the pineapple fried rice (RM20.00) – the khao phad sapparod…

…and all of us loved it a lot especially with the chili dip that came with it. My missus said that it had that salted fish taste…but I think that must be their authentic Thai fish sauce that they use a lot in their cooking and it was really really good. Yum! Yum!

The Thai green curry, beef – the gaeng keaw wanna_praw, nuer (RM20.00)…

…was absolutely out of this world. It was bursting with all kinds of rich flavours that we could not help going, “Wowwwww!!!!” A word of warning though – it was very lemak (rich) with its thick santan (coconut milk) gravy and very very pedas (spicy hot) so it would be best eaten together with rice. My missus gave it her double thumbs up as she is into anything and everything that is extra spicy!

Don’t bother about the prawn salad (RM7.00) though…

I had expected something Thai-style like our kerabu, raw with lots of cili padi and crushed peanut and everything else and served with a generous squeeze of calamansi lime but what we got in the end was nothing of the sort – just those few miserable prawns on top and everything else with something like the Thousand Island salad cream. This certainly was a let-down, I must say.

Well, other than the disappointment we had with the salad, it was a delightful lunch and I, for one, was glad that I dropped by that day and managed to sample the food before the Thai lady chef left town and if you’re in town or from around here and you have not gone there yet, you only have a couple of days (till the 24th) left to do so. Hurry! Hurry!