Archi's Thai Kitchen doesn't sound like all that promising of a name for a restaurant, unless you're bringing Veronica, Jughead and Betty. But what's in a name?
This is a narrow, homey place belonging to a Thai man who calls himself Archi. I didn't bother asking if that was his original name, but what with Thai names being as long as they are (a Thai fellow named Srisingrasongkram lived in my dorm, freshman year), it's probably better I didn't.
Besides, I really liked what I ate here, even if it isn't as rustic or unabashedly Thai as the cooking at the more famous Lotus of Siam across town, or Ocha, by the Stratosphere, on the Strip. Archi, who has a charming, pretty team of Thai women cooks and servers, is a clever man, and knows his clientele are largely farang, Thai for foreigner. But this is an example of Americanized cooking that works. Everything I ate Chez Archi was delicious.
The dining room, with its mustard walls, wooden clocks and a picture of Thailand's beloved monarch, King Bumiphol, is relaxing, softly lit and unlike the typical turn-up-the-lights, eat-and-leave Asian restaurants so prevalent in Vegas.
Most dishes are served mild unless you ask otherwise, and when the waitress gives you a scale from one to five for spiciness, even five isn't going to be enough to make Thai people ask for a glass of water. You'll also have to ask for Thai condiments like nam pla, the fish sauce that makes Thai dishes salty and pungent, and pla prik, another incarnation of sauce laced with deadly hot, diced green chilies. Proceed at risk with green chilies, please.
After that, you're in for a nice ride. Appetizers are hard to resist, particularly the fish cake, tod mun on many Thai menus, and stuffed chicken wings, a wonderful version of a dish most Thai restaurants botch.
The fish cakes are light, springy and golden-brown, deep-fried, basil-laden orbs served with cucumber salad heavy on crushed peanuts. The wings are a triumph, both artistically and on the palate. The wings come stuffed with a mixture of pork and glass noodles, after having been pan-fried. They are served in slices, like a French galantine, only better, a veritable fugue of flavors and textures.
Most of the starters are fine, but this isn't where you want to order Thai beef jerky. All it is here are long beef sticks coated in black pepper and then deep-fried, nothing at all like the dried, crunchy beef done at places like Lotus and Ocha.
But there are compensations. I was intrigued by the blackboard special of Thai-style macaroni. It turned out to be even better than I imagined. Picture pad Thai, the flat rice-noodle dish, except with ordinary elbow macaroni out of a box standing in for the noodles. The dish is pure kid food: pasta cooked to a comforting softness, then mixed with cooked egg, whole shrimp and Thai stuff like ka, galangal (in the ginger family), basil and kaffir lime leaves. I left wanting more.
Salads are the most Thai part of Archi's menu. Larb is a typical dish from I-saan in Northeast Thailand near Laos: chopped pork, chicken or beef tossed with rice powder, green onions, chilies, cilantro and lime juice, and eaten in the hollow of a raw cabbage leaf. Papaya salad, or som tam, is made from unripe green papayas, shredded and mixed with crushed peanuts, dried shrimp and green beans. In Thailand, the dish is often made with tiny river crabs. The waitress just smirked when I asked for some.
The remainder of the menu runs the gamut from the various curries—red, green, yellow and panang, which all use sundry pastes of pounded spice—to entrées like pad kapow, pad prik king and ginger ginger ginger, which needs no translation. (The first two mean basil, bell pepper, garlic and chili; and curry paste, green bean and lime leaf, respectively.)
The idea with entrées is to choose your meat—chicken, beef, shrimp or pork—and the kitchen performs a sauté with said sauce. It's all meant to be piled onto steamy Thai rice, hot from a giant server of the stuff that winds up in the middle of your table.
If rice isn't the way you like to get your carbs, then consider a noodle dish, like the macaroni or the best noodle dish served here, pad see-ew, wide rice-noodles that have become a nice shade of bronze from being stir-fried in soy sauce.
You won't find much for dessert other than a nice coconut ice cream, but the Thai iced coffee, a tall tumbler filled with dark filtered coffee, sweetened condensed milk and ice, is a great way to end a meal ... if you aren't planning to sleep right after you eat. Besides, a hit of caffeine and sugar is practically soul food in American Thai restaurants like this.