A good friend from the Chowhound community always organizes such amazing lunches, and he is great finding a “a hole in the wall†type of places, this time we went to Golden Bankgkok, a Thai restaurant that most of the group have tried already, except for me and one Canadian Chowhounder that joined us today.

The way the meal started made sense, with the softest and sweetest flavors, getting us to sour & bitter lands to end our meal with hot, pungent spicy craziness.

We started with this khao piak sen (chicken soup with homemade noodles), everyone liked it and to be honest it was good to start, the starchy soup opens your appetite, not salty, a touch of sweetness and bitterness thanks to the crispy garlic.

khao piak sen

Now this dish rice paste wrap was so simple yet so filling, wrapping in romaine lettuce pieces of Thai eggplant, ginger, peanuts, tomatoes, this sweet & savory rice paste and sliced lemongrass. It was just combination of aromatics and flavors still you feel light after having so much going on your palate.

rice paste wrap

I was very excited when I saw this dish on the menu Orm Lam (eggplant curry stew with beef) and yes the beef was tender and had a great texture, but the flavour was too mild, perhaps Iâ€m comparing it to the Vietnamese Goat Curry Stew I had a couple of weeks ago at Eden Center, but this dish didnâ€t deliver much flavors but for a non spicy Thai food person, this is a safe dish.

Orm Lam

The Banana Flower Salad, had tons of citrus touches with cilantro, it was very balanced, I wouldnâ€t order a whole bowl for myself, but it is great for sharing if ordering as a side dish. As you can see on the picture everything is mostly shredded so I didnâ€t get to make a distinction between the banana flower and the other elements on this dish.

Banana Flower Salad

Nam Khao (rice ball salad with pork), out of this world, personally this dish didnâ€t impress me on paper or when I saw it, then I had crunchiness of the fried rice (just as a good Panamanian Concolon!) then lime touches, cilantro, sweetness of the pork, it was heaven in my mouth and I could have had more and more of this dish, it is a must!

Nam Khao

Soup nor mai (bamboo shoot salad) I donâ€t even know if how to mention this, I feel terrible because my experience at this restaurant was really positive, this dish wonâ€t bring me down, and it wasnâ€t a matter of they missing something or poor execution, this dish was just Iâ€ll put it this way, I thought this salad was made of Durian, and I have never had Durian in my life, except for the candy my sister brought me from Nepal. this was serious, kind of smelly, I just tasted with the tip of my tongue and put a napkin and didnâ€t eat… some others at the table, as Chowhound warriors ate a spoonful and said it was ok but they couldnâ€t have a bowl or would order again.

The texture of the Koi Pa (shredded fish salad) threw me a little off at first, but its flavors were amazing, I am a huge fan of ceviche but I have to admit that the flavors on this salad were beyond the ones of a ceviche, it has so much going on without overwhelming the dish. there is galangal, lemongrass, touch of palm sugar that gave such complexity to the Koi Pa I just canâ€t wait to try it again.

Koi Pa

The Poon Pa (pounded fish) was just ok a little of the usual citrus flavors, lime & cilantro and the fish, nothing fantastic I can pass the next time.

Poon Pa

It was a revelation to try the Ping Ling (grilled tongue), you see my mother has cooked tongue so many times and even myself I have prepared it on dinners because of itâ€s demand by guests.  But I have never, ever even crave beef tongue, and yet I can still remember how I forgot to ask what dish it was while I was trying this Ping Ling I asked afterwards mentioned how soft and tender and tasty it was and someone “Itâ€s tongue Helena” and thatâ€s when I had this revelation, I had a slice of it without the sauce, and then with it. The bitter sauce I can live without tasting it for the rest of my life, the second sauce was amazing I even dipped my sticky rice in it, it was delicious, sweet, sour, citrus, pure tasty. Right now while typing this I want tongue and I want lots of it!

Som Pa (fermented fish) reminded me of a piece of beef jerky but with more texture and less chewy, it was another dish that at first sight I wouldnâ€t think it would tasty, but then this restaurant proved me wrong again with its fermented flavor and acidity it was another refreshing dish I would love many people to try.

Som Pa

Grilled Chicken the “Ping Kai” was served with a papaya salad which was really different and really HOT in compare to the ones I have tried before, it was not my favorite but I canâ€t say much because itâ€s heat was more that I could take, this dish was also served with a sauce that everyone called the soup because by itself with just some rice it was amazing.  Going back to the chicken itâ€s the closest I have tasted to my favorite kind of chicken the Jamaican Jerk Chicken, so yes it was as good as it sounds and as good as it looks.

Ping Kai

The last dishes Sai Oua (Lao sausage) it was nothing amazing for me itâ€s difficult to describe a dish that is safe and tastes just OK after having some disappointments and also so many great dishes at the same time. Forgettable is the word that comes to mind.

Sai Ou

At the end the kitchen sent a closing dish, it was a super ultra HOT past, I am not sure up to this moment what it was but it stayed in my mouth for a good few minutes, i tasted some sweet and salty but then the heat hit me like a bomb and I am very happy this was at the end of my meal because I wouldn’t have been able to taste anything after this dish.

A couple of ladies and I ordered white and dark Thai beers, I am not a huge beer fan but with this cold weather and so much spicy going on I would rather a glass of dark beer or I would suggest for non-beer fans, young coconut drink!

Rest of the pictures on my Facebook Page! CLICK

The next time I’ll make sure to check out their desserts!

¡a comer!

We drove all the way to Germantown from Arlington and when we arrived I noticed that it is such a pretty town I would love to visit it again. Arriving around 12:15 we thought it was going to be crowded since one of us have tried this place already and she mentioned how busy it gets around lunch time.

The lady at the door smiling all the time let us choose our own table. The bar and the darkness of the place made me think of one of those restaurants people go when they’re hiding from someone, but the warmth of their service made me forget about that once they gave us the Menu.

So there we were four people very hungry and going through every single item on the Lunch Menu and the Dinner Menu, one of my friends “John” asked the waitress if she had a Thai written menu because many of these restaurants usually have another menu in their own language just for whoever asks for it, she said they just had the lunch and the dinner menu and in that moment the two people missing arrived and so we started ordering.

As many other restaurants their menu is very uncomfortable to read, it was a huge laminated menu and then a smaller one for the lunch. The place was pretty empty so I would like to come back to check if the service is as good as when they are crowded. Also I really wanted to order the Papaya Salad but nobody else was interested so that’s something for the next time.

First the Lahb, minced chicken cooked with herbs & limejuice. This was fantastic, by far my favorite dish, at first I wasn’t too interested because of its appearance, for some reason it made me think of my mom’s scrambled eggs, and then I thought eggs and lime this is going to kill me. But then I gave it a try and it was fantastic, it kind of reminded me of the flavors in ceviche but with a different texture and plus there is a seasoning to it with the herbs that makes you want to keep eating spoonfuls of it.

The Crying Tiger is a grilled marinated beef served with a spicy sauce, John mentioned it was like a Fajita Thai version, yes it had a strong flavor, it was well grilled and it was just a very safe dish so if you go to this restaurant with a friend who won’t do curry, noodles or other Thai spiced strong dishes, this is it.

Our third starter was the Street Grilled Pork on skewers, well done, they served it with sticky rice and a sweet sauce, just as the Crying Tiger it was a well prepared dish, but this one brings out more the Thai flavors.

The last starter we ordered, because I insisted, something about the word “corn” on description of dishes that I feel an urgency to try, this was a Sweet Corn cake, it was lightly fried and they served with a sweet and sour cucumber sauce, the cake itself had a nice crunchiness on the outside and soft inside plus the texture of the corn worked very nice, on the flavor side there was nothing amazing about it but if you decide to order this you must certainly use a lot of the sauce. Someone at the table mentioned that it didn’t seem like a Thai dish and we asked the waitress and she said it was an option for vegetarians, instead of fish cakes that people would find rather spicy or something like that. It didn’t make too much sense to us and now that I googled it appears that yes it is a Thai dish so I guess she was just overwhelmed by all the questions we were asking.

As I mentioned before names on dishes are something that get my attention, in the case of “Floating Market Noodle Soup” I was very excited and it’s so sad but it was a completely forgettable dish, it had slices of beef and meatballs with thin noodles, even the broth was rather bizarre, is a dish John mentioned is worthy to try at the Thai market but not at Sabai Sabai now that we did.

Another miss were the Sizzling Mussels and the Spicy Sour Curry. The mussels were battered with eggs, bean sprouts and scallions, it was served as a pancake and for half of the table was overall good, but for the other three including me it was just plain.

The Sour Curry wasn’t too spicy and it had chunks of white fish (properly cooked) served in a sour curry soup with string beans, I’m not ordering this dish again, it didn’t taste bad, it didn’t taste period.

There was also a Green Curry dish which name I can’t recall, it had pork, coconut and Thai eggplants, I didn’t care for it, I tasted coconut and after that the curry was pretty mild, non-spicy and watery consistency.

The Pad Kra Pow is a must in this restaurant, a chili basil paste stir fry with finely chopped, almost minced, meat, I thought the basil was going to be too much for this dish, boy was I wrong this was so tasty we were fighting over this dish, I wish they would have given us more than just 2 bowls of rice for 6 people, specially for this dish, but at the end we managed around to share the Pad Kra Pow (I just love to say it’s name over and over again).

We usually never order dessert, but after so many savory flavors I insisted if I could finally try a signature dessert of Thai Cuisine, I always take a look at it on menus and never order it, it’s just always there, but today I convinced everyone and boy was I right! Yes Mango Sticky Rice, the mango in season, I haven’t had good mango since my last trip to Panama, it is very difficult to find just the perfect ripened mango in DC markets, and the rice, so good, the rice was amazing, the sauce totally immersed in the rice, the coconut, the sweet and salty flavors all combined with toasted mung beans, which gave the perfect crunch to this dish, it was just fantastic. I think I found a new favorite dessert and something I promise will try to recreate so I can share the recipe with you.

Everyone should try Mango sticky rice at least once in his or her life.

¡a comer!