Best of Thai Food Restaurant     泰之選泰國菜館  

This is a place we randomly tried in Kowloon city. We didn't check openrice first to see if it's famous, and we didn't check which dishes to order. We thought, what the heck, we're hungry, they serve food. and there's no queue. We're good.Working around Central, I hardly find any set lunch priced below HK$50 anymore...so I was very happy to see this HK$35 set lunch, serves with a drink! Oh yes!

There's nothing fancy about Kowloon City. It's really about getting down and "dirty", at least most of the time, and enjoying honest, good grub. And since this really is Little Thailand, you get a very nice selection of Thai eateries serving up goodies from their hometown that is down south. Best of Thai is one such eatery, with authenticity oozing. Thankfully, communication isn't such a big problem since all the servers speak more than a smattering of street Cantonese, and some even enough to crack a joke or two.

Tom Yum Soup
The Tom Yum is a winner here. It's not the refined clear version. This is a robust shrimpy version but is not as spicy as it looks, unless you happen to win the draw and bite into the hidden potent Thai chillies. The orange is suspected to be mostly the essence of all the shrimps, complete with heads, they load the old-style "steamboat" pot with. Well balanced with Thai spices such as lemongrass, Kaffir lime leaves and of course, sinisterly given heat with hidden Thai chillies lurking beneath, this is a wonderful tummy warming soup to start any meal here with (well, unless you're in the deep throes of summer, in which case, you better hope they have a working air-conditioning system).

Warm Minced chicken salad
While we're on the topic of deceiving looks, this is the one where danger lurks. Yes, it is spicier than it looks and you have to ask them to take it down a notch if heat is not your thing. But if you can, this is addictive since the lime/fish sauce/Thai chillies combination is excellent when lightly tossed with the minced meat (you can choose chicken, pork or even innards).

Lettuce leaves
So take a fresh crunchy lettuce leaf, spoon in the minced meat concoction, wrap into a little pocket, bite and enjoy the burst of flavours.

Other dishes that I've tried here are between a fair to a good. While you won't be blown away, you are still likely to still leave satisfied..

Yellow curry stuffed in a bread bowl
This unfortunately looked better than it tastes. The curry is not as flavourful as I would have liked, and the bread was too soggy by the time it sits at the table for about 5 minutes. The dish would have fared better if a bread bowl of a baguette quality was used but I guess that would be a tad costly for what they charge here. Such potential though...

Pad Thai
This is a pretty credible version of the quintessential Thai street dish. The plus point is that it is a lot less oily. The chef does a good job of stir frying the noodles with the ingredients to a point where you feel they are all at unison. No more overt rice flour taste from the noodles but transformed into a firm platform for different tastes and fragrances from the eggs, shrimps and chives.

Steamed Mullet
I generally dislike this dish for the fact that I've never enjoyed the texture of the fish being continually steamed at the table with the little flame underneath. What I do like however, is the very appetising soup that the fish sits in, flavoured by the minced pork, preserved plums, ginger, and a lot of spring onions. In this version, I stuck to the soft underbelly of the fish and was generally happy enough. No elation though.

Assorted appetisers
I left this appetiser to the last as it was my least favourite. The only thing I really like here are the shrimp cakes which were well deep fried to a crisp, encasing a bouncy shrimp colloid on the inside. The other things like the spring rolls and Satay, were ordinary.

If you're in the vicinity or are in the mood for some Thai with "street cred" without having to fly to Thailand, this could be your place.

For the original post with photos, visit edeats.blogspot.com

So a friend of mine was visiting from New York City and my good other friend suggested we get Thai in Kowloon City instead of the usual dinner in Central.

Environment: The place is pretty bare bones. I would say around the level of most indoor dai pai dongs (大牌檔) and definitely a little on the cramped side...but with that said, most customers probably come to this place not because of the environment.

Service: Overall service was ok. Food came quickly and the waitresses did their job. The waitresses here don't speak great Cantonese or English (they are Thai) so sometimes there were slightly communication issues. Also the waitresses seemed extremely busy throughout the night and at times it took a little more effort than usual to get their attention.

I've always heard Kowloon City has a great deal of good Thai restaurants and 泰之選 (Best of Thai) did not disappoint. Portion sizes here are quite generous so keep that in mind when ordering. We ended up ordering 5 dishes between the 4 of us which included:

Green Water Spinach With Garlic (蒜蓉炒通菜) - Very big flavors to start the meal. Some might considered this dish 'too garlicky' but I quite liked it. A simple yet tasty dish.

Thai Appetizer Dish (泰式拼盤) - We ordered the small size and everyone on this was pretty decent. Maybe a little too many fried items for my tastes but I loved dipping the prawn and fish cakes in the sweet and sour sauce.

Special Fried Rice (泰寮炒飯) - My first impression of this dish was it reminded me of the Japanese omu-rice (which is an omelette wrapped around fried rice). What surprised me was the ingredients inside. This turned out to be a seafood fried rice (with squid and prawns) and was quite good. What I particularly liked about the dish was the use of mint. The mint wasn't overpowering and gave the dish a slight cool finish after each mouthful.

Soft Shell Crab With Curry (咖喱炒軟殼蟹) - The sauce was a little on the thick side but this was quite tasty. The soft shell crab was very tender but still retained a little crunchy texture while it was smothered in a mild creamy curry sauce. Yum.

Fried Fish With Mango Salad (芒果炸魚) - I was a little surprised with this dish when it was presented since the 'fish' looked more like a eel. Anyway, this dish was more on the spicy side and the texture of the fried fish was really nice and crunchy. My minor gripe with this dish was that you couldn't really taste the fish since it felt like I was mainly eating mouthfuls of crunchy bits. On top of the fish was this green mango salad/slaw. Quite tasty if you like to eat spicy. Pretty a decent dish.

A few things to note if you decide to come here:

1) If you didn't make a reservation come here early since it gets packed quickly after 7PM on weekends
2) They only accept cash so remember to hit the ATM beforehand

So my first Kowloon City Thai experience was a positive one. Overall I left the place quite stuffed and the meal was quite reasonably priced (about $125 per person). Although I didn't find any dishes to be 'home-runs' I still felt the overall quality of food was quite high. Would be interested to come back here and try their other signature dishes.