Sherman's Food Adventures: Tip Thai

Tip Thai

Meeting up for eats with Nikita has always been a treat. She is pretty much game for anything (if it is gluten-free of course) and anywhere. Hence, when I suggested we head to PoCo to try Wilbur & Sebastian's, she readily accepted. When we arrived, it was epic fail on a grandiose scale. Not only was the place closed for vacation, I had no backup plan! Hence, the only option was to drive into Downtown PoCo and search for eats. We quickly parked and surveyed the available options. Well, we didn't try very hard since we were pretty darn hungry. Therefore, we spied a tiny restaurant across the street called Tip Thai. I quickly looked it up on Urbanspoon and found out it had a 90% rating. Of course that could be misleading, yet it was a start.

And to start... we had the Tom Kha Kai which is a soup consisting of chicken, coconut milk, mushroom, cilantro, fish sauce, galangal, kaffir lime and lemongrass. This was pretty fragrant with hits of lemongrass and galangal. I would've liked to see more coconut milk, yet it was enjoyable nonetheless. In addition to the regular menu, there were lunch specials for only $6.99 that included salad and fried wontons. Seeing how Bluebeard and I would not be satisfied with only 4 dishes, we went ahead and got 5 including the soup and a dessert. The first to arrive was the Pad Thai. Thankfully this was not the ketchup-laced version. I have nothing against it per se, but I do prefer the tamarind kind. This one had a pronounced fish sauce hit with plenty of wok heat. It needed more zing in the form of more tamarind and pickled turnip. I'm sure they kept it safe for mass appeal.

Next up was the Stir-Fried Cashew Nuts with Chicken. Again, there was plenty of wok heat which helped caramelize the ingredients. Hence, there was depth of flavour while the veggies maintained their crunch. They did add too much palm sugar though. As per usual, we went for some curries as well starting with the Beef Red Curry. When it arrived, something was odd about it. Those chunks... were they sweet potatoes? No, they were actually golden squash. We'd never seen this before in a red curry and Bluebeard & Nikita have been to Thailand too! Whatever the case, it wasn't bad since we don't mind golden squash. As for the curry itself, it was a bit thin in flavour. It was mostly coconut milk with little spice. It would've been nice to see some bamboo shoots as well. The beef was pretty good though, being in large tender slices.

We also got the Chicken Green Curry which was coconutty as well with obvious hints of shrimp paste and fish sauce. It was pretty mild with tender pieces of chicken and vibrant veggies. Lastly, we had the Pad Kra Pao with Beef. As you can see in the picture, the veggies were vibrant and there was not an excessive amount of liquid.  Hence, the flavours were caramelized while the veggies remained crisp.  The slices of beef were tender much like in the red curry. While we were there, the place was pretty much full for lunch.  At $6.99 for the specials, we could see why.  Overall, the food was pretty good, especially being in PoCo.  There is better Thai food around, but you'd have to go into Vancouver to get it.

The Good:
- Inexpensive
- Decent eats

The Bad:
- Flavours are mild (appealing to the masses)
- Small place, don't bring lots of people


Tip Thai Restaurant on Urbanspoon

1 comments:

mbsunshine said...

I hope this restaurant will do better than the last few in that particular spot! It was a greek place, donair place, coffee place, etc... My mother would just say it has bad "feng shui"

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