I can't believe I've never done a
blog post on Thai Café. I've been there a million times, and it's one of my favorite restaurants in Stillwater. It’s right near downtown,
off on one of the side streets. I always
thought it was an odd location, because unless you know it’s there, you could
very easily miss it. But I swear everyone
who lives or works in Stillwater knows where it is.
Because it’s always crowded, especially at lunch. I've never had to wait to be seated, but
there’s been times where we have gotten the last available table. I will admit there's been a couple of times where our food has been pretty slow to come out, but that happens only very rarely, and usually when it's super crowded and lots of tables are ordering at the same time. The kitchen just gets backed up. It happens.
It’s a decent-sized restaurant, seating maybe about
100. And the seating takes up ¾ of the
space around the kitchen. There are booths all the way along the long wall on
the left; tables in the middle; and along the short walls at either end are big
group tables that can seat 8-10. You can
almost always find the owner there during lunch, seating guests.
This is one of those restaurants where I almost always get
the same thing. I know that goes
completely against the food blog premise, but I can’t help it. I think I’ve tried maybe 2 other items on the
menu. One was a honey sesame chicken
that my friend Amber had raved about.
You would think I would love it, considering I like everything in the
dish. But and I definitely was NOT a fan
of the creaminess. I can't explain it, but I couldn't even eat it. And one other time
I had something else; it was good, but I honestly can’t even remember what it
was. I saw a guy get a big bowl of soup,
and it smelled really good. Maybe next
time I’ll try that.
What I like about most of the menu items is that they come
with soup and salad. I
wish they had wonton soup. But they
don’t. So I go with the egg drop
Mine didn't have any corn in it this time, which was kind of
odd. Because there’s usually quite a bit
of corn in it. But oh well. It was screaming hot and delicious, which is
the most important part.
The salad is just salad, but I really love the dressing. They do a mix of ginger and peanut, and call
it fusion. I don’t care what they call
it, it’s outstanding. Really great mix
of flavors. I get the dressing on the
side so I can just put what I want on there.
And I’m usually pretty good about not using it all, even though I
could. They should bottle and sell and
this mix.
Mary and I always go straight to the stir-fry menu. And we always get the teriyaki. She goes with
chicken and I go with beef. We both get the spice at about level 3 (out of 5), and brown rice. Once or twice they've gone overboard on the spice, and it's super hot. But usually they get it just right.
This truly is one of my favorite dishes. It always comes out steaming hot, the meat is
so tender and flavorful, and the sauce is fantastic. It's a little thicker sauce than I've had at other restaurants. There’s a lot of onions & peppers, which makes me really happy.
The one thing I wish is
that the meals weren't such big portions. Yes,
I know you can get a to-go box and don’t have to eat the whole thing at one sitting. We both usually do that, but then end up
snacking on it at the office the rest of the afternoon. So by the end of the day we've eaten the whole thing. Normally I’m stuffed about 2/3 through lunch, but
for some reason yesterday I wolfed down the entire thing and wasn't even full
until I was done.
