I had a plan. a few of my plans go awry, and I’m fine with that. This one went in a direction I didn’t think of until about 20 minutes before it happened.
Thai wi rat was shut when I went to go there originally. It was closed from the 11th to the 23rd of November for refurbishment. I haven’t been there before, I don’t know what was refurbished and I certainly couldn’t point out what I thought was refurbished.
The interior of this place was ok. It wasn’t fantastic. It wasn’t glossy. It was a place you went to eat. I think that was the appeal of it.
It was setup, successfully, as a place you go to eat. There wasn’t a lot of fancy decorations or anything, just a simple layout. This was surprisingly daunting at first, for a few seconds anyway. You just walk in and sit down, wherever you want. I have been to that many places over the past few years where you wait to be seated that it threw me a little. I sat down and perused the menu.
I have to admit here that I had a different idea of the food I would be getting. There is a place on Beaudesert Rd called Rainbow Thai. I have eaten a lot of good food there, and was expecting the food at Thai Wi Rat to be the same.
Nope.
I started with a Duck Larb. Larb is a meat salad. I have had one before that had more salad than the one on Sunday, and far less meat and chili. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the one I had there. It was a mound of duck mince, a toupee of salad (after much deliberation I have decided that is an adequate description of the amount, or a comb over of salad), 2 slices of orange and a lettuce leaf. I have kept them separate as the toupee of salad consisted of some onion, maybe radish, some green leaves and some chili. It was also gingerly arranged over one side of the mound of mince.
I would like to point out again here, I liked this dish including the appearance.
Thinking there would be more salad under the mince, I was surprised (happily) to find out that this was mostly mince. The duck itself was a bit fatty, but this was balanced out by the chili. The toupee was tasty too, especially with the duck. The duck on the lettuce leaf with some of the orange though, was pretty good. I can see why duck a l’orange is a thing.
I am pretty sure it disappeared quicker than the waiter was expecting. He looked a little surprised and assured me, in a friendly tone not a scared one, that the Pla Dook Yang was on its way.
Pla Dook Yang is pretty much bbq catfish. The plate came out with 2 pieces of catfish, 2 bits of orange and a lettuce leaf.
I ate the orange and the lettuce leaf first, partially for food and partially for the thing to cool down.
I looked at the catfish. It had been gutted, and beheaded. Not deboned. There are so many damn bones in a catfish. I was still finding them in my mouth later. This is not a bad dish though. The meat was nice, when you could get to it, and there was still a surprising amount of it.
It took me a bit longer to eat this than it did the duck larb, mainly due to the amount of bones in it. I wound up carefully peeling the meat back, and trying my hardest to make sure none of the bones came through. Still bones. The only time there were no bones were the crispy fins and tail. Don’t let this deter you though.
Try it at least once.
Especially if you have never had good catfish before.
See you.
Bren's Food Adventures 