3/5 for syphay house. whenever you drive down calgary trail it's pretty hard not to notice this shack of a restaurant out of the corner of your eye. located in pleasantview, this place really doesn't look like much. appearances aside, i kept hearing very good things about this restaurant, and since i'm not one to judge a book by it's cover... i visited on a friday night.
parking is abitof a challenge. they only have a few stalls behind the restaurant (and none were available) and apparently if you park in any of the neighbouring lots, you'll get towed. eventually we found something on a nearby side street. yes, the place looks abitlike a run-down shack, but that sort of thing is pretty endearing to me. upon entering we were asked if we had a reservation, which we did not. the wait would be 30-45 minutes, which was fine with us. our mistake for not making a reservation - i really had no idea that the place would be so packed and popular. there were people waiting at the door to get in the entire time. the restaurant is very small, and despite the shortcomings of the exterior, the inside was very warm and cute. there were lots of ornate decorations and i loved the deep purple paint on the walls.
the friendly server eventually brought us to our table (the wait wasn't so bad) and we ended up in a really nice sunny spot by the window. there are about eight tables in the room and every single one was occupied with happy diners.
when it comes to thai food, i have my "program" pretty down at this point. however, i enjoyed perusing their menu and reading about the interesting seafood dishes that they have available. i promptly began my meal with a thai iced tea. thai iced tea is made up of strongly-brewed tea and condensed milk and served over ice. this one was just as good as any that i've ever had. i can't help but wonder why it's so orange, but it always tastes refreshingly great. such a treat!
next we decided to order an appetizer. they have something called the syphay platter (4 meat spring rolls, 5 pineapple shrimp wraps, and 8 garlic shrimp rolls - $11.95) which seemed to provide a few different things to try. this was probably my favourite part of the entire meal. each of the brown little packets were bursting with delicious flavours. the spring rolls were meaty. the pineapple shrimp wraps were really something new and different - i loved how creamy the insides were and how they bursted with sweet, fresh pineapple. the shrimp rolls were cute and tiny little morsels of flavour. every item dove into the dipping sauce, and i enjoyed them all.
next up was the main event, in which we stuck pretty closely to our usual favourites; gang keauy (green curry, coconut milk, green and red peppers, snow peas, broccoli, basil leaves, kaffir lime leaves - $16.95), pad thai (stir fry rice noodles in a chili sauce, egg, bean sprouts, carrots, chives, topped with peanuts and cilantro - $15.95) and of course coconut rice ($3.50). all of the food arrived fairly quickly. each dish gave you the option of choosing either chicken, beef, or tofu to go with it, so we chose the tofu for the green curry and we paid a littlebitextra to have chicken and shrimp in the pad thai.
first the green curry. i loved how bright and fresh all of the vegetables were, and i also really liked that the tofu had been fried before tossing it into the dish as opposed to the globby white cubes that sometimes turn up. there isn't much better than green curry over coconut rice... but i found the curry itself to be a littlebitoff. it must be this restaurant's style, but the curry was more like a gravy, which i wasn't used to. at first i noted the benefits: that it would adhere to the rice much better instead of running straight through. but in the end, i just wasn't thrilled with this dish.
the pad thai was abitof an improvement. it was pretty standard fare, noodles and nuts and a distinct tamarind sauce. not much to complain about. i enjoyed shoveling the bites into my mouth and went back for seconds of this dish.
the coconut rice was excellent and full of coconut flavour!
the food was alright, but nothing that blew my mind, and i certainly know of better thai places in town. the worst part was that the food really did not sit very well in my stomach and i didn't feel so great for the rest of the night. my co-diner didn't feel this way at all, so i really have no explanation for why this happened. i wanted to love you the way that the rest of edmonton seems to, syphay house... but it just wasn't there for me.