Sripraphai Database

Oct 2, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Zora) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:06:00 +0000

Just one new thing on this takeout order:

C-12: Saute eggplant with ground pork, garlic, chili and basil leaves. There was fermented bean paste in here, with the occasional small whole bean--nicy funky undercurrent, and good texture. Definitely would order again.

Also had the usual papaya salad (A-1) and chicken larb (A-13). Excellent as always. Nice contrast between the smoky red-chili heat of the larb and the fresher, green-chili heat in the salad.

30 August 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Zora) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:29:00 +0000

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.

28 August 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Zora) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:42:00 +0000

In attendance: Moi, Peter, Karine. A little slow on the uptake, so the details are not as fresh as they once were. We did not gorge ourselves. Slow and steady wins the race...

C-3: Soft Shell Crab with Garlic and Pepper--off the mini specials menu. Not quite as ethereal as the first time I had it, a couple of years ago, but still delicious. The first time I tasted it, I realized the parallel between soft-shell crabs (tender, not-grown things) and, say, green almonds--also not yet fully formed, but still tasting of their essential almond-ness. Think crabbiness encased in a light cloud (and, in this case, garlic and pepper). Damn good.

~~N-19 (B): Noodle soup with stewed duck.~~ Oh, damn--noodle soups are lunch only, says the waitress.

OK, so:

O-6: Ground Meat with Chili and Basil over Rice. Great. Tasted like a merging of Drunken noodles (N-5) with the sweet, caramelly pork of Pork Leg with Mustard Greens (O-1). Peter circled this in green in his notes.

N-1: Pad Thai with Shrimp. I don't remember if I've ever actually ordered this before at Sripraphai. Why the hell not? It was good. The shrimp were perfectly cooked.

O-3: Roasted Pork with Special Sauce over Rice. "Special" sounds a little euphemistic, and it was indeed a mysterious sauce--a little sweet, maybe even a little clove-y...all the warm spices. Overall a teeny bit cloying, but what saved this dish was the nice variety of pork bits: shredded meat, some chunks and some crispy bits of skin, which had gotten not-so-crispy by sitting under the sauce--great textural contrast.

July 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Zora) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:19:00 +0000

Who would've ever guessed nine whole months would pass between Sripraphai visits? But that's how my life has been. Peter ordered some takeout when I was out of town a few months ago, but unfortunately I lost the record of that order.

Here's what we got tonight, via takeout:

A-1: Papaya salad. You know the drill

A-24: Grilled meatballs with spicy sauce. I picked these by going to my favorite thing (A-23: BBQ beef with chili and mint), and then just going for the next thing. Sort of a generative psychogeography approach to the restaurant ordering. I opted for beef over pork, as I was ordering another pork dish.

This is the only thing I've ever eaten at Sri that I thought was too sweet--or sweet at all. And they were a very bouncy texture--not my favorite, but somehow consistent with a larger Asian aesthetic for chewy-bouncy. The first couple had a nice earthy spice to them that I couldn't quite identify; then the next ones I ate were too coated in sauce to really get anything else out of them. Oh, and another quibble: These did not seem to be grilled at all.

O-14: Pan-fried mussels with bean sprouts. 'O' stands for 'Over rice,' and yet this dish specifies '(no rice)'. In fact, I got no bean sprouts either because I didn't notice them in their separate container until I'd finished stuffing myself full of the mussels. They were in sort of a big ol' egg batter/pancakey situation. They sure looked deep-fried, not pan-fried to me, but I'm not arguing at all. They came with a sweet-ish red hot sauce.

C-17: Saute pork leg with chili and basil sauce. Mmm. Soft, easily shreddable pork (with the squishy skin still on--funny, I can happily eat that when it has a little crisp too it, but couldn't go for it in this state), which tasted very star anise-y, then mixed with the chili and basil. This basically tasted like a mix of the pork in O-1 (Pork leg with mustard greens) and the sauce in N-1 (Saute drunken noodles), although with none of the smokiness of the latter. Good.

What restraint--that was it. Oh, except we also got a bag of lettuce leaves, carrot sticks and lengths of long bean...I guess these were meant for the meatballs? Unclear...but I appreciated how they'd been portioned out exactly: two large lettuce leaves, two small ones, two beans, two carrots--and no fighting with your brother!

At the rate I'm not plowing through the Sri menu, I'm thinking this ought to be a wiki instead. I'm sure there are some people out there who could make short work of it...

1 Sept 07: The Fridge

noreply@blogger.com (Zora) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 04:41:00 +0000

Completely forgot: We picked up a few prepared things from the fridge. We're always ogling the fridge while we eat, then forget to get anything when we leave because we're so sated.

But finally...:

1) Bamboo Shoot with Bai Yanang

I should've looked up bai yanang before, as I would've found out that this is maybe supposed to be used as a soup base. It was super-intense on its own, and not entirely delicious. Peter mixed it in with some other stuff--noodles, I think--and still wasn't completely taken with it. Funky.

2) Tamarind Paste

This is more versatile--tamarind, dried shrimp, garlic and some other stuff.

1 September 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Zora) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:30:00 +0000

Last night the Sripraphai Database (SDb) was born. We stared at the menu and couldn't believe how much of it we hadn't eaten. Or if we had, we sure as hell didn't remember -- it has been, oh, eight years of dining or so.

So I'm working off this menu, which is not quite current, and I'm not sure whether the numbers of the dishes are the same. I'll update if necessary when I get a current menu.

What we ate:

A-1--Papaya salad. Even in the interest of dining diversity, I will never forgo this dish. Those weeny dried shrimp and the crisp beans, and the dressing that's somehow hot without any visible spice cues... Perfect.

A-23--BBQ Beef with chili, mint and lemon juice. Another exempt dish--this will get ordered probably every meal (now that I can finally remember which one it is--the descriptions for all the salads are sort of confusing). Long live meat salad. Mint is just one secret that I have to remind myself of when I make this at home.

A-26--Fried fish cake. We ordered this after seeing similar delivered to a table nearby. Oh, but duh--we've had the fish cakes before, and they didn't look like those other table's--those were breaded. We think they might've been shrimp cakes (A-27) in retrospect. Next time.

C-TK--Northern-style curry with noodles. Off the specials menu, so I don't know the number. It's like the Thai version of Greek makaroneh, or any other pasta-with-meat-sauce, but with some stringy, thready things we couldn't identify and some other tastier bits. Not spicy. I just ate some of the leftovers now, and ended up with a mouthful of some weird animal parts, little pellets of chewiness. This sounds like a bad thing, but it's not. I'm sure those added to the flavor.

C-21--Roasted duck in hot and spicy sauce with thai eggplant, bamboo shots. Delish. Hot. We were pretty full by then. Basil in it too. Eggplants are good and crunchy.

We wanted to order O-14--pan-fried mussels with bean sprouts (which is under 'rice dishes' but doesn't come with rice)--but they were out.