30 August 2009

Oh, geez, you guys! The menu at Sripraphai has totally changed! I mean, all the same stuff is there--it has just been all renumbered. And it's in a big three-ring binder with laminated pages and tabs along the side. There's even a whole separate vegetarian section. Super-organized. Maybe they got on a back-to-school kick or something.

But...oh. my. god. I just realized it has been a full year since we ate there last? How on earth does this happen with time? Do I sound like an 80-year-old woman? Yes? OK. Anyway.

This also kills me because before this trip to the restaurant, I'd just spent a beautifully anal 45 minutes annotating a PDF of the old menu, with all the comments from previous visits.

Anyway, here's what we had, according to new menu numbers. When I get a chance, I will dig through and match it up with the old. (And I'll figure out what to do with the old menu PDF...)

A-13: Larb. Now handily labeled 'larb' on the new menu, in fact. This used to not be so clear. We got chicken larb. Great spice, loads of crunchy toasted rice, distinctive roasty flavor from the red chiles fried in the oil first. I know I've eaten this before at Sri, of course, but not within the realm of this documentation, so this was a bit of a gimme.

A-12: Duck salad. On the recommendation of a previous commenter (thanks, Lauren--from a full freakin' year ago!). Tasty again. Pretty simple--not as herbed-up as some other meat salads. There were chunks of pineapple, which made me not so excited visually, but once I got over my prejudices, I had to admit was tasty. Duck and sweet fruit is hard to argue with.

A-36: Chicken curry puffs. Meh. Boring. Wouldn't order again. This is for the people at the table who are leery of this whole "Thai food" idea. The dipping sauce with chopped-up cukes was the best part.

C-16: Crispy pork. Another fine recommendation from Lauren--may she one day know that I finally followed her advice. It was pretty much all...crispy pork. Not much sauce, not much in the way of herbs. A little spicy. It was all about texture (crispy giving way to a little chewy in the middle of each chunk), in the way that good snacks make you compulsively eat them, just for the biting-into-it sensation.

F-8: Whole fried fish with lemongrass. Very yummy. I think our mission on this was to figure out how the lemongrass was worked in there, and was it edible, or was it in big chunks to pick out. It must've been edible, but that's about all I can say. The mix of seasonings was a little sweet, and not as hot as expected even though it looked like chunks of red bird's-eye chilis in there. I'd order this again, except I'm curious about all the other fish.

I've got to say, everything was delicious this time, but not mind-blowingly so. Maybe because we didn't get so much spicy stuff. And maybe because we didn't get a papaya salad. Or maybe because in the whole goddamn year that has passed, Sri has lost its touch and I'm the last one in the world to know? I can't believe that.