As much as it isn't hard to find a Thai restaurant in the Lower Mainland, it is truly difficult to find a good one. I've had better luck doing so in Portland, Oregon than here. So it really did pique my interest when a small Thai spot opened up on Knight near Kingsway. Silom Thai only sports 6 or 7 tables, but it features a menu that features a surprisingly diverse array of dishes. Some of which I've never seen on any other menu locally. Of course I made resos to try the place out ASAP. Thank goodness that I did because they were fully-booked, on a weekday!
We were only able to snag a small table for 2, but that didn't stop us from going ham on the menu. We started with the Yum Pork Roll with salted egg. This was literally cha lua sliced into quarters and tossed in a fermented fish sauce, spicy & sour sauce, shallots, green onion, cilantro, chili flakes and salted duck egg yolks. This was indeed yummy since the seasoning was all the good things about SE Asia. We had a combination of tanginess, spiciness, sweetness, herbaceousness and also saltiness. The pork roll was merely a textural component of the dish.
At first, when I spotted the Crispy Enoki Mushrooms on the menu, it made me nervous. I thought back to the version I had at Miso Taco and remembered how greasy they were. Well, turns out that at Silom Thai, they know how to deep fry them perfectly. Still delicate and retaining their unmistakable chewy texture, the enoki were coated with a crispy and non-greasy batter. So delightful to eat them with the sweet chili sauce.
To get a taste of more items, we also ordered the Silom Platter with Green Papaya Salad, Grilled Chicken Wings, Grilled Pork Jowl and Deep Fried Pork Balls. The best thing on the plate was the pork jowl since it was doing its bouncy textural thing while being nicely charred. The wings were good too being juicy and well-spiced I was on the fence with the pork balls. They were nicely textured with a bounce and being crispy outside, but it wasn't as interesting. The papaya salad was crunchy, bright and tangy.
I always compare Pad Si Ew to my favourite in town being Sen Pad Thai. This one here at Silom was pretty close. I think the wok hei (or wok's breath) was sufficient enough to caramelize the flavours and add a sear to the mung bean noodles. They were chewy and had a nice elasticity. The dish was fairly well-seasoned but could've used just a bit more saltiness. We decided on chicken as the protein and it was a bit dry. Gai lan was vibrant and crunchy.
Naturally, we also had to try the Pad Thai and this version was made with glass noodles (more mung bean). We opted to make this vegetarian with tofu. I'm not sure if having such big slices of fried tofu was the best choice here. I would've liked smaller pieces instead. As for the noodle, it had great mouth-feel with a bouncy chewiness. Seasoning was a bit sweet, yet there was enough tanginess from the tamarind to balance. There was the slightest of spice too.
Now if this Green Curry Crispy Chicken looks good in the picture, imagine eating it. This was absolutely fantastic with a crunchy piece of fried chicken. The meat was moist and when dunked into the curry, there was a flavour explosion. It was lightly creamy while definitely spicy. However, we could still pick out the aromatics of the coconut milk and the slight brininess of the green curry.
Last dish was the Tom Yum Dry Noodle with ground pork, deep fried wontons, green onion, cilantro and beansprouts. Of all the dishes, I felt this was least successful. I do think that the individual components were good including the chewy noodles and the tangy tom yum sauce. I think there needed to be more sauce since the pork and beansprouts watered down the flavours. Those wontons were excellent with a crispy dumpling skin and juicy flavourful filling. Overall, the food at Silom Thai is very good where they put care into preparing the food. This is a definite return visit for me as I'd like to try some of the other dishes on the menu.
The Good:
- Well-prepared eats
- Impactful flavours
- Inexpensive
- Really small place, not many seats and they are not spacious