Thai Cafe Blogging : Sushi

Thai Cafe has opened a sushi bar! It's in the back, in the expanded seating area that they opened last year.

The prices are comparatively low, and an order of nigiri is a single piece, so you can order a wider variety of things, even if you aren't sharing. I got snow crab, mackerel, eel, scallops, squid, octopus, yellowtail, salmon, tuna, snow crab and salmon roe. The fish was really quite good. The mackerel was more pickled than I like, but that means I can just eat more of the other things.

My Most Faithful Reader got a spider roll and a vegetable tempura roll. What I'm most interested in is combining this with the Thai food. I can imagine getting some Thai Cafe baskets, soup or fresh basil rolls and with 3 or 4 pieces of nigiri.

Thai Cafe Blogging : Ice Cream!

Thai Cafe has recently added housemade ice cream to their dessert offerings. Before they just had creme brulee and coconut cake, which is an unusually short list. Now they have housemade coffee, red bean, green tea, vanilla and strawberry ice cream. I had the red bean, which my 2nd Most Faithful Reader and I enjoyed. My Most Faithful Reader had the coffee, which was great. I would have ordered it or the green tea, which had both been recommended by our waiter, but I avoid consuming caffeiene in the evening. I rarely ever get dessert at Thai Cafe, because I'm usually too full after my meal to tackle their large serving of creme brulee, but one can always fit in some ice cream!

In contrast, Rockwood Filling Station, right across the street, has quit serving their housemade ice cream, which was very disappointing the last time I went there. They still have root beer floats and milkshakes, though. Dear readers, were you not ordering their ice cream enough for them to keep it around? Shame on you. Actually, Scott Howell has a tradition of taking away my favorite desserts. I'm still dreaming of the fried pies that he used to serve at the Q-Shack. Fortunately, I love the Anchovy pizza at the Filling Station so much that I'll forgive him.

Thai Cafe Blogging: Thai Iced Tea

I decided to take a few vacation days, so I recently had the opportunity to join my Most Faithful Readers and some family friends for lunch at Thai Cafe. I love Thai iced tea, but just a little caffeine with dinner will keep me up during some portion of the night that I want to sleep, so I am careful to avoid it. That makes any trip to a Thai restaurant during the day quite a treat. Of course if I haven't had any caffeine in the morning at all, then I have to resort to Thai Iced Coffee, which I don't like nearly as much.

The important thing is that Thai Cafe's Thai Iced Tea is excellent and beautiful, too.

Thai Cafe

Sometimes when I search my blog posts for a restaurant that I go to regularly, it shocks me to find that I haven't written about it at all in over a year. Thai Cafe is such a restaurant. I go there quite often, because their food is so consistently good. I do, however, tend to order the same things over and over. I get the Thai Cafe Baskets, which are pastry shells filled with shrimp, chicken and corn. They are served with a tangy honey sauce, containing chopped peanuts and cucumbers.

I usually combine them with another appetizer. Tonight I got their fresh basil rolls, which are excellent. I often get their coconut soup with shrimp or pot stickers, which are soft, yet crispy, and served with a spicy-sweet coconut curry sauce. Now and then, I'll choose either pad thai or chicken massaman, which is wonderful and is what my 2nd Most Faithful Reader orders every single time. My Most Faithful Reader always gets the shrimp tempura and I steal at least one piece of broccoli, which she gives up without incident.

One of the reasons I like going there is that you can see most of the restaurant from wherever you sit and can often see if people you know are there. Plus, that makes random people-watching even easier. Tonight it was entertaining when one baby screamed on one side of the restaurant and another baby attempted to duplicate the scream on the other side. Normally I don't find loud baby shrieks entertaining, but this was exceptionally amusing to me.

Happy, Hideous, Lovely and Refreshing

Saturday night, my van decided that it didn't want to open the automatic doors anymore. My dad spent rest of the weekend taking everything apart, trying to determine why. The motors in the doors were fine. The limit switches were fine. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to figure it out, but a signal is being generated constantly indicating that the doors should close. My dad is planning to drive it to Charlotte to get it fixed. Ordinarily, this would drive me up the wall, but since I recently drove over 1700 miles within a week and a half, I don't mind it so much. From that perspective it's really good timing. I'm also very happy that this didn't happen while I was on my trip!

I haven't seen any sign of the skink.

The Flying Fish is no more. It was actually bought out a couple of months ago and is now called the Gulf Rim. They pretty much have the same menu, with a few additions. They also painted the interior of the restaurant a hideous shade of orange. Granted, I think most, but not all, shades of orange are hideous.

The Thai Cafe has finished their renovations for their new addition and it looks lovely.

On their current menu, ACME Food and Beverage Co. has a shrimp and crawfish pasta served with heirloom tomatoes sauce that is both beautiful and delicious. This past weekend, they also had watermelon sorbet as a special, which was delightful. My dad thought you might as well eat a slice of watermelon, but I thought it was even more refreshing and certainly colder.