By all accounts, I should dislike Bangkok Café, where I've rarely failed to have a frustrating experience with the staff. But I don't. Matter of fact, I love the place.
I didn't even know it was there until the day I accidentally pulled into the mini-mall and saw a sign on the door that read "authentic Thai taste." Too bad it was a Sunday, the only day of the week Bangkok Café is not open.
I made a mental note to return, and return I did, with my wife, who happens to be Asian and who loves spicy food—in fact, the spicier the better.
I mention this simply because Thai restaurants that cater to Westerners usually turn down the heat and turn up the sugar, but when an Asian is present, they keep it real with less argument. After some cajoling, our server brought out a tray of Thai condiments: red chili, pickled peppers and nam pla, a pale, amber-colored fish sauce. If my wife hadn't been present, all bets would have been off on that score.
Don't even bother to look for a more bare-bones place. It's basically a tiny box with tables and a front counter, the only décor being the paper napkin specials posted on the walls. Credit cards are not accepted.
On our first visit, when the restaurant was busy with lunch, we waited for our server, a young Thai-American woman, to get around to us. She took her sweet time, and after we finally ordered, so did the chef.
But the wait was well worth it. After 15 minutes, she brought us something called low-carb pad Thai, then a dish of Chinese broccoli sautéed in spicy bean sauce, and last, yum pla muk, the best calamari salad I've ever tasted. The only downside was that I had ordered ong choy, not broccoli, and the noodles were woon sen, a clear bean thread, and not pad Thai, a flat rice noodle.
I shouldn't have said anything, because the dishes were so good, but I couldn't help it.
"This isn't ong choy (a reedy spinach)," I told her. "Oh, we're out of ong choy", she replied. "And this isn't pad Thai, either", I countered. "Yes, it is", she said, looking rather surprised I had noticed. "Pad Thai isn't a kind of dish, it's a kind of noodle," I reminded her. That was the end of that conversation.
Things got worse on my second visit. My main bête noire with Asian restaurants is an injudicious use of sugar. Panda Express and P.F. Chang's have made a fortune with this formula, though, so the idea that sugar is what we like is here to stay.
Whenever I go to a Thai restaurant, the first thing I tell my server is that I don't like any sweet dishes or pre-made sweet sauces. My second server, a Thai man, insisted a dish on the wall—rice roll with crispy pork, bamboo shoots and mushrooms—wasn't.
It arrived with its components drenched in dark, sweet soy sauce, a thick, syrupy concoction with enough sugar to make your teeth hurt. "You said this wasn't sweet," I said ruefully. "Some customers say it isn't," came his sage reply. Oh, well. Like the song says, you've got to know when to fold 'em.
Now when I go to Bangkok Café, I order whatever and enjoy the result, like clay pot rice. I pictured rice cooked in a clay pot, Chinese style, which of course it wasn't. What I got was a clay pot filled with steamed rice, with shrimp, chicken and a few mixed vegetables dumped on top. Was it good? Sure.
I'm also crazy about several other dishes. One is pra ram, a rich peanut sauce with a choice of chicken, pork or beef, eaten over rice. Another is pad see ew, rice noodles and a choice of meats, pan-fried in a light soy sauce with broccoli and fresh eggs.
Appetizers are delightful, and delightfully authentic, too. Som tum is a shredded green papaya salad seasoned with lime, tomatoes, Thai chili and peanuts, although in Thailand, the salad is often laced with dried shrimp or tiny river crabs. Laab, a specialty of the Northeast Thailand, is a spicy minced chicken or pork salad where the meat is rolled in a rice powder, which imparts a unique texture.
And then there is sukiyaki, named for a Japanese one-pot supper made with beef. It has no resemblance to Japanese sukiyaki, of course. Here, the dish employs clear bean thread noodles, Napa cabbage, a spicy house sauce the menu calls "sukiyaki sauce," eggs, green onion, a choice of meat and a green vegetable I happen to be fond of.
Yep, you guessed it, ong choy. Like the Mounties, I always get my man.