SalaThai

After having possibly one of the most carb-heavy brunches at The Fish Shack, I still didn't feel very hungry when dinner came around. My aunt took us to SalaThai on Burrard Street for a dinner of Asian cuisine. 

SalaThai looks like it has been in business for many many years. Upon stepping into the restaurant, I noticed how much Thai-related decorations are placed all around the restaurant. Everything from a rickshaw to elephants and exotic plants. The lighting inside is dim, giving it that 'high(er) class feel' and the table settings resemble that too, with the napkins fancily folded up. The restaurant is fairly large, probably because it is an older establishment. There is a private party room and an elevated 'indoor patio' as well. The tables and chairs are quite dated, and some of the chair seats are sunken in and not comfortable to sit in. 

Since we were all unfamiliar with Thai cuisine, it was difficult to make our dish choices. They have an option for a set course menu at $25 per person. The menu is expensive for what you get. The portion sizes for each dish feed one person; perhaps they want to mimic a 'fine dining' restaurant. Anywho, here is what we ordered. We shared family-style.

Beef Satay

As appetizers, we got two orders of beef satay (total of 6 sticks) and a green papaya salad. The beef satay was tender and well seasoned, but the peanut dipping sauce was watered down and not pungent enough. The picked cucumbers on the side were very appetizing, or 'stomach opening' as the Chinese would say. Although the satay tasted fine, it did not match up to the high price. 

Green Papaya Salad

I was very excited to try my first green papaya salad. It did not disappoint; the saltiness of the fish sauce, the chili, and the crisp produce, and crunchy peanuts blended well together. This was around $9 or $10 for a small bowl-sized pile of shredded papaya. Something I will attempt to make at home next time.

Special Curry with Scallops, Prawns, and Young Coconut Meat

Since it is a Thai restaurant, we couldn't go without trying one of the many types of curry. We settled on one listed on the chef's special page that had scallops, shrimp, and (apparently) young coconut meat. Sounded unique enough! I was pleasantly surprised that they used the big, fat, juicy scallops. Frozen or not, it is an appreciated component. The shrimp, wait prawns, were just as large and delicious. There was six of us trying to share this one order of curry so I didn't get the chance to fish out a bit of everything. The major complaint is that the curries do not come with rice. A bowl of rice cost $2; even if that bowl is a decent size, two dollars for white rice is kind of ridiculous. Curry is no good without rice so we ended up ordering like four bowls of rice just to slop up all of the curry. It was a thick and rich (from the generous amount of coconut milk) curry (you don't find that too often!), but one shallow plate of it with a price tag of $17 makes the most of us want to refrain from eating it again.

Pad Thai

And again, as Thai-food-newbies, we ordered Pad Thai because hey, how can it go wrong? I'm no expert critic on pad thai but this was merely okay. The noodles were more on the sweet side and had the slightly wet-sticky feel. Not necessarily good or bad, but just the facts. There were a few slivers of tofu and a bit of crushed peanuts. It was pretty basic and nothing about this dish stood out to me. It wasn't cheap either, around $15 I believe...

Pineapple Fried Rice

Finally, we ordered a Pineapple Fried Rice because my aunt, who has come before, said it was tasty. We also needed something to fill our stomachs with. This was more presentation than anything else (I saw they also serve fried rice in a young coconut shell). The pineapple was hollowed out, but because of its small size, it barely held anything. There was some chicken, sauteed onion, and cubed pineapple in the fried rice and the top is some pork floss (or fluff). Again, it didn't have anything that made it distinct and worth purposely coming for.

The total cost for this dinner was nothing close to cheap, considering what we received. The presentation of all the dishes was very beautiful and the quality is okay/good, but the portion sizes and WOW factor just didn't do it for us. The location is very convinent, just around the corner from Pacific Centre and Robson Street, meaning that many of the customers are probably tourists that ran into the closest restaurant looking for a meal. (Ahem, tourist trap.) I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone nor choose to come back, as the money could very well be spent on better food deals or go to a better cause. Sorry SalaThai, but the cons from our first encounter heavily outweighed the pros.



Love from Coconut Crumpet's Corner ♡