After sampling many Chinese dishes, both in Israeli restaurants and abroad, we decided to broaden our horizons. Thai House is a recommended Oriental food house, located in the midst of Tel-Aviv.
After sampling many Chinese dishes, both in Israeli restaurants and abroad, we decided to broaden our horizons. Thai House is a recommended Oriental food house, located in the midst of Tel-Aviv.
The Thai kitchen differs from the Chinese kitchen by putting an influence on ingredients such as kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, coconut milk, fish sauce, holy basil and peanuts.
Almost all Chinese and other Oriental restaurants offer some Thai cuisine, but Thai house makes this their specialty.
We came in and were seated in a quaint bamboo hut, with matching wooden tables and chairs. It was fairly quiet and very cool inside despite the summer heat outside.
While browsing the menus, we sampled Singha, a Thai beer (Lager, 5.8% alcohol, 20 NIS) which is fairly interesting and another Japanese beer called Ashai (22 NIS).
The restaurant menu offers a choice of first courses, with an emphasis on meat and pork, and a wide selection of main courses. The main dishes include a variety of soups, a few pad-thai dishes, and quite a few seafood/chicken/beef/pork dishes, all served with steamed rice. It’s also worthwhile to check the Curry dishes, these are dished served in a steaming soup, made from all sorts of interesting ingredients, to create a strong variety of tastes.
We started off the evening with Som Tam – A dish of thinly sliced green papaya, with cherry tomatoes and yard long beans, with ground peanuts, garlic, and squeezed lemon juice (usually served spicy, 26 NIS). This was a delicious dish, served with sticky rice, which you can roll in your hands to grab the food – a very refreshing and light dish.
Our second appetizer was the Moo Yang (32 NIS) – Marinated roasted pork, sliced, and served with “prick naam caem”, a bitter and spicy pepper sauce. The pork was very delicate and tasty and yet did not seem too fatty, the sauce fitted it perfectly.
The main courses followed in short order – Phat Bung, one of the restaurant’s specials, A Thai vegetable, grown organically especially for the restaurant, stir-fried on an open fire with a brown bean sauce, pieces of pork and a touch of hot peppers (62 NIS). A very exciting dish, as I was unfamiliar with this vegetable. It is very difficult to describe the taste of the dish unless you know the ingredient well, but it was very, very good.
Another house special – Gang Lo Gai, A dish of chicken wings (cooked with the bones), livers, hearts, and gizzards, served in a jungle curry sauce (a sauce where the ingredients are not finely ground to preserve their original tastes) – (served very spicy, 62 NIS). This was an excellent dish, it did need a lot of steamed rice to ease up on the spicyness. Of course, you could ask for it to be a bit less spicy, but that would be sort of missing the point, right ?
The final dish we tried was the Garng Kiao Waan Goung – Prawns, Eggplant, Lime leaves, Basil leaves, Cooked in a green curry sauce (69 NIS). Did I mention you really must try a curry dish ? If I had not seen the menu, I would have never guessed those rectangles to be cooked eggplant, the taste of the curry is so overwhelming – it a fantastic experience.
We could not resist ordering a dessert of Melons, Pineapple, Papaya, crushed with ice and tapioca (cassava) spheres, all served with coconut milk to create a refreshing and light course.
