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Siam Garden, a closer look
5/23/08 - Aaah, the joys of Thai food, I tell you! I just can't get enough of it! To me, Thai cuisine is like the modern-day supermarket shelves - you know, like when the high-powered, big-budget marketers hire white-coats in latex gloves to conduct studies of how best to "hook people" and create, quite literally, unconscious addictions. All the different colors and patterns in those cans of Campbell's chicken soup and Oreo cookie packages, when arranged neatly and en masse, dopamine our brains into a sense of happiness and satisfaction. It's amazing what vivid colors and fractal patterns can do to the human brain.
That's almost as bad as the fast-food trick of hyper-loading both salt and sugar in every item on the menu, triggering another Red-Bull rush of pulsating neural connections and other volatile molecular activity, all of which serve to satiate us like no can of tuna and rice could ever dream of doing.
Likewise, just one taste of a good Thai meal, and you know that sensory overload has arrived. Before you know it, you'll be signing the check and wondering what just hit you! The flavors of tamarind and kaffir lime juice, salty fish sauces, galanga, Thai basil, cumin, lemon-grass, coconut milk, and of course, raging-hot chili peppers and fragrant jasmine rice, are overwhelming, indeed.
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Great Thai cuisine along Nimitz Highway. |
That being said, I better have gone to a great Thai restaurant today! There are many - Mekong 1 or 2, Champa Thai, Siam Palace - so much more! Alas, I have chosen (ok, it was wifey...) Siam Garden near the airport. They have a nice, modern Thai atmosphere and most importantly - great Thai cuisine! Plus, it's not so far from Keg Liquors on Waiakamilo st. where I had to grab a keg for my home beer machine. Ken and Lisa are always so cool. Lisa's always smiling and happy even though she always gotta work and Ken is ever helpful with fixing beer machine problems.
Wifey and I don't actually always have it running - it's way too much for us alone, so it cranks up when we know there's a party or something. Bottled beer just doesn't compare. Like pasteurized milk (and mostly everything off supermarket shelves), they heat it up to kill off any harmful bacteria. Unfortunately, it also kills off some of the good stuff, too (the luuuv, as I call it), altering the natural taste and "healthy" enzymes in the beer. This process may have done wonders to the health of the global population, but if you want the real thing, you gotta have the luuuv!!!
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Lottsa luuuv! |
As attempting to mention earlier before getting side-tracked (you may have noticed it happens a lot with me), the inside of Siam Garden has a really cool modern Thai style. There are rattan-backed chairs with glossy, wooden frames, Thai pictures strategically patterned on a contrasting yellow wall, hanging bamboo lanterns, and strong white cross-beams that stand out nicely from the brown-colored lattice roof. You get the feeling that there are no "forgotten corners" when it comes to the decorating, all the way down to the clean white linen, sparkling silverware, frilly curtains, and flower vases (fake roses, but still...).
I hear this place kicks up in the evening, with reveling guests singing Karaoke in Thai, Chinese, and other ethnic tongues well into the evening. Good to know. Don't worry, I won't get sidetracked again with a couple of informative paragraphs on good karaoke. Maybe next time...
Wifey almost always gets Tom Yum Kung, or hot-sour soup, usually with shrimp. As you can tell from the pic on the right, I love when the bowl comes loaded with lemon grass and galanga, a highly aromatic kind of Thai ginger that smells, amazingly, almost like a fresh boquet of flowers! Without these two ingredients, a Thai meal is doomed!
Just so happens today that we forgot to tell our kind waiter to prepare everything hot - not Thai-hot for today, but really hot, nonetheless. You can already tell by the soup's color that it is not dyed red with fiery-hot peppers. No worries. The remedy arrives quickly in the form of both dried chili flakes for the Tom Yum Kung soup and hot chili sauce for everything else.
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Control your own heat destiny. |
You knew the curry had to come out soon. You knew it wouldn't be Thai without the coconut-milk specialty known all over the world. We went with a red chicken curry this time. And don't think that just because it's red, it's the hottest dish in town! Green peppers, which are the same thing only younger, are actually hotter, but it doesn't really matter, as dishes spiced up with either color are only as hot as you request the chefs to make it.
The poster-child of Thai foods.
Instead of the usual pad thai noodles (which I can never tire of!), we went with a shrimp and bean thread "casserole." Not exactly what you imagine when thinking of casserole (not to mention noodles!), but technically, it is cooked and served in the same bowl so I guess it qualifies.
The flavors in this dish were pretty amazing. The concentration of soy, spices, and galanga soaked right up into the core of every thin strand of bean thread noodle, perking me up in amazement after the very first bite. A few more fork-loads, however, and it was like one of those triple chocolate desserts - unbelievable until you eat too much! It could possibly be too over-powering for many out there.
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Casserole? I guess... |
It was another satisfying Thai meal. Another page in the wondrous world of food. And another peek into a different culture through its palate. What an incredible world we live in!
Aloha until next time...
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