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2004-08-28: Chicago Eatathon, Part 3 -- Thai Me Up, Thai Me Down
Posted by extramsg on Tuesday, September 28, 2004 @ 01:11:27 PDT
Contributed by extramsg
"Hold on a sec." Erik raised a finger as he rapidly fired words into his cell phone and finished his conversation. Scott and I had just come out of Joe's with some sausage and were surprised he was there. A broker, Erik talks fast and thinks fast. His slight accent betrays his midwesternity, but the clothes, the hair, the sunglasses, the attitude, the wiry build -- they're New York, Vegas, or LA. Scott would later call him the Chicago food scene's Mr. Pink, but I think that's unfair. They may share a certain manic passion, but Mr. Pink isn't cool. Erik isn't mobster cool, but he's culinary cool, like a bit of Bourdain without the chain smoking and years of heroin addiction.
"You guys headed to Spoon?" We had set up a lunch with a few LTHForum members at Spoon Thai, one of Chicago's most well-regarded Thai restaurants. Spoon is known for its "secret" menu, a Thai-language menu that Chowhound and LTHForum patrons, including Erik, had helped translate. I told him we were just heading over there and asked him if he wanted to join us. "No, I don't want to influence your experience."
Two days earlier, Erik had set up a special dinner at one of his favorite Thai restaurants, TAC Quick. The day before that, he had generously showed me around town in his car, including a tour of the neighborhood around Argyle and Broadway dominated by SE Asian markets and restaurants.
Photo Album
Our first stop on Broadway was Thai Grocery. Erik knows the owner and he introduced me. The man was visibly proud of his small store, as he should be. Everything was supremely fresh. The lemongrass looked like it had been peeled to the core -- no yellowing, no splotches, no dried, wrinkly leaves. But it hadn't. Their lemongrass appeared freshly plucked. The sizeable bins of galangal and ginger didn't contain waterlogged roots with slimy skins or shrivelled chunks, stale and ready to mold, even on the bottom of the piles. Thai Grocery supplies many Thai restaurants in Chicago with their produce. As a result, the turnover is high and the produce is pristine.
A day earlier, "Gene" (another Chowhounder/LTHer who wants to remain anonymous), had shown me around and included Asian Food Grocery on Kedzie since we were nearby. While the store had a slightly better selection than similarly-sized markets here in Portland, and had a good level of quality overall, it couldn't compare with Thai Grocery. Still, I would be happy to add either to our choices.
Thai Grocery also has a well-stocked freezer and a deli/meat section. The freezer contained some items that they also sold fresh, such as galangal, but in other forms, such as slices, or even the flower. A relative of galangal and ginger, turmeric, was also vacuum-packed and frozen. Other fruits and vegetables that I didn't recognize sat in bags with labels in both Thai script and transliterated English.
As you walk into the back room, the deli is on your right and the meat case is on your left. The meat case contains both standard cuts and things you won't find at Kroger. But the item that had my face pressed against the glass, was the sausage. Thai Grocery sells multiple types of locally-made Thai sausages. This was one of those moments I wished I had a portable freezer.
Across from the meat case, several dishes sit in warmers, waiting to be sold by the pound as take-out. You can get pad thai if you want. But you can also get minced chicken with basil, red curry with sour bamboo, green curry with fish balls, palo pork with eggs, or whatever else the kitchen thought sounded good that day. Next to the curries sit various fried items, such as bananas and taro. In front of those are fried pork skins, whole fried fish, and salted mackerel.
According the the owner, he'll be opening a much larger spot soon. Erik drove me by the building and it was huge, a full-sized supermarket. Since Thai Grocery has such a strong commercial business, its little operation on Broadway is only the tip of a well-spiced iceberg.
From there, we walked to Viet Hoa, an all-purpose Asian market with a SE Asian emphasis. The dry and canned section is extensive, but the true fun begins with the seafood. A buffet of fish and shellfish on ice sits in the middle of the large, open room. Tongs lay in each bin and you claim your catch, like picking panes dulces at a panaderia. But watch out, those crabs in a box are still snapping.
Viet Hoa has a supermarket-sized produce selection. I counted about five different species of eggplant, assorted squash, all-too-ripe, Durian, greens, herbs I'll never remember the names of, green papayas and plantains, and multiple types of taro and other tubers. The quality wasn't at Thai Grocery's level, but it was acceptable to good with most items.
Get all the offal bits and unusual cuts of cow and hog between the fish and produce. Feet, tongue, tripe, liver -- they have it all. But the large, meaty packs of oxtails at below-Costco prices ached to be braised in my Le Creuset. I usually cast a suspicious eye on my local Asian butchers. The meat often looks like Safeway's leftovers. But this stuff looked good. The meat section completed a very well-stocked Asian market.
We finished the area with a quick bite at Tank Noodle, one of Erik's favorites. The main reason we went was for the pickled hog plums. It's apparently used unripened, knotched in order to allow the brine to permeate the fruit. It's served with ground chile. Interestingly, this is very similar to a hog plum preparation in southern Mexico, the source of most varieties of hog plums, and I wonder if it was an export along with chiles and if it was the same species of fruit. The bahn mi and pho were both good here, too. It's a small place that allows smoking, but they're moving to a much larger spot not far away.
As if Erik's generosity in driving me around from neighborhood to neighborhood for seven hours wasn't enough, he also said he could put together a special dinner at TAC Quick the following night. Erik had translated their Thai menu and knew the chef-owner. We arrived and met several LTHForum members. For the most part, Erik had worked out a progression of dishes ahead of time and convinced the crew to follow his lead.
In all, we ordered nine dishes: 1) fried chicken (kai thawt); 2) fish maw salad (yam kra piaw plaa); 3) papaya salad with dried shrimp (som tam thai); 4) Isaan-style pork/rice sausage (sai krawk isaan); 5) minced chicken with deep-fried holy basil stir-fry over preserved egg (kai phat ka-phrao kriap khai jiaw ma); 6) green curry chicken with apple eggplant (kaeng khiaw-waan kai); 7) sour curry with accacia leaf omelette and papaya (kaeng som cha-om); 8) star anise braise with pork, tofu, and hundred year egg (parlow/"palo"); and 9) red curry with water spinach and pork (kaeng tay poh).
My three favorite dishes were the sour curry, star anise braise, and minced chicken. All were among the best Thai dishes I've ever eaten. The sour curry worked perfectly with the bland egg. The anise braise had a wonderful sweetness, like caramelly Vietnamese claypot dishes, that was balanced by the earthy flavor of the preserved egg. And the minced chicken had a perfect texture, tender without being mushy, contrasted by the crispy-fried basil, and accented by the pungent egg.
The oddest dish was the fish maw salad. Fish maw is the air bladder. In the salad, it's crispy, like a light pork rind. It has less flavor than fried pig skins, however. It mostly adds a textural component, otherwise the salad is rather typical Thai -- mostly lettuce, shrimp, and some mint.
The most disappointing dish was the green curry. It wasn't bad, just not quite as intense or fresh-tasting as I like and can get at my favorite places in Portland. However, the eggplant in the dish were perfectly cooked and superior quality.
All in all, certainly one of the best meals of the trip. The company was good, the environement was pleasant, the waitress was gorgeous, and the food was interesting.
Two days later, Spoon Thai would be a letdown and severely suffer by comparison. Even though Erik didn't want to join us, he did give us some recommendations. Armed with the words "Thai menu," Scott and I met three previously unencountered LTHForum members for lunch. It took us a while to decide, but finally we ordered six dishes: 1) enoki salad, 2) banana blossom salad, 3) fried chicken, 4) pork neck larb, 5) beef panang, and 6) mild (yellow) curry with chicken. Some of the dishes Erik had recommended weren't available.
The enoki salad, the dish Erik had most insisted on, was easily the best. The enoki had a noodle texture and would make a great low-carb pasta. The banana blossom salad was the most disappointing for me, even though it was decent. I enjoy banana blossom and was expecting something spectacular. But the dish was so over-powered by the peanutty dressing, I might as well have been eating from a jar of Jif with a spoon. A subtler dressing, or maybe more heat to balance the peanut flavor, could greatly improve this salad. The pork neck larb also disappointed. The meat is sliced and very dry. I see no advantage to pork neck over minced pork, except for the novelty. The yellow curry was fine, though nothing special, but the panang was odd. It also had an overwhelming peanut flavor. Scott wondered if they had run out of panang and decided to give us satay peanut sauce instead. One last complaint: even though I asked for it to be made "Thai spicy," everything was very mild, too mild, even for a midwestern palate, I would suggest. It hurt the balance of the flavors. This was the most disappointing meal of my trip.
Still, I was introduced to a great Thai and Vietnamese food scene in Chicago. Recently, Erik sent me a newly translated copy of Sticky Rice's Thai menu, and I wished I could go back. How many other cities even have Thai restaurants with Thai menus? Freshly made sausages, grocers with takeout, secret menus, regional specialties -- and even if you don't find something you like, you can always break out Thompson's Thai Food and buy many of the hard to find ingredients and make it yourself. Plus, Chicago has the only four star Thai restaurant in the United States, Arun's, which I was lucky enough to visit on a previous trip. This farang will certainly make Thai food a requirement of any Chicago trip in the future.
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