PHAYATHAI - THAI

STUB REVIEW: 

TERRIFIC THAI FOOD AT PHAYATHAI!

Their website:  http://www.phayathailaurier.com/
107 Avenue Laurier Ouest, Montréal, QC H2T 2N6 ‎
(514) 272-3456 
For their menu, click on their "Notre Menu" tab on the main page 


Price range:  $25+ for one person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip

View Larger Map

 

Chicken green curry!

Mouthwatering summary:  Very tasty, pricey Thai food in the Plateau
Meal to try:  Green curry chicken, with Thai beer!

 
Hello folks! Been a while! Sorry for the recent dearth of posts - I just had a HUGE number of job interviews in a very short span, even as I worked and went to school. All that ate into blog-writing time like nobody's business, lemme tell ya. That said, I'M BACK! To kick things off, here's a stub review of an awesome recent discovery: Phayathai!

Located in the Plateau, Phayathai is a higher-end Thai restaurant (especially relative to the truly inexpensive C Thai. See my review for that restaurant here: http://mouthwateringmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/09/c-thai-thai-food-kinda-self-explanatory.html ). Phayathai has a warm, inviting, well-appointed decor with fairly lavish pieces/objects of art all around. Even the menu is replete with sumptious, colourful paintings. Somebody certainly put some thought into the design, that's for sure!

Of course, you can't really eat the decoration (well, okay, you technically COULD, but then you'd need a quick trip to the hospital. And perhaps psychological counseling...). Food is the important part, after all. And I'm happy to say, the food at Phayathai just SHINES.

Ahem. Shall we begin?

We started with fish cakes with cucumber sauce ($8.75):

These looked and tasted nothing like any fishcake I've ever had in my life - they were very different from  fishcakes in Western cuisine, but in a good way. The cakes were flat discs of (what felt like) hand-minced fish interspersed with finely chopped chives. The chives and fishmeat were so tightly bound together that the chives' inherent chewiness made the fish cakes almost crunchy to the bite (pseudo-crunchy, if you will). The texture was certainly very interesting, and the whole thing was quite flavorful. On its own, you could taste the fishy brininess with just a slight tinge of sweetness. We ate half the fishcakes without their accompanying spicy, nutty sauce and the other half with. I do recommend you try the fish cakes both ways!

We also ordered  steamed chicken-vegetable dumplings with peanut sauce ($7.95): 

The dumplings were pretty standard but pretty good regardless. The sauce, on the other hand,was quite special. It was a thicker, almost clumpy paste, and the peanut flavor was stronger than the peanut sauces served in most other places. It was GREAT, and really elevated the dish. I will say this though: DON'T dip the fish cakes into the peanut sauce!

Moving on to main dishes, we ordered the boneless roast duck in Thai red curry ($16.75). 

This dish was pretty tasty, I must say. The red curry sauce was creamy and almost thick, the duck was tender and flavorful (but not as tender and flavorful as Chinese BBQ duck), and the whole thing was just only very mildly spicy. Basically, it was spicy enough to let you know that there were hot pepper flakes put in, but not enough to set your tongue on fire. Effectively, this is my preferred form of spiciness - not too much! Interestingly enough, this curry sauce was slightly sweet - not quite something I'm used to from Thai curry. Definitely a plus though!

And now, for my favorite dish here (so far): Chicken green curry ($15.95).

OH MAN you have to try this! Remember everything I just said about the duck in red curry? Well, this dish was like that, except BETTER. Woo! The dish was slightly spicy, and the chicken, peppers, and other standard ingredients were swimming in a creamy, creamy green Thai curry sauce that was also slightly sweet. And absolutely everything blended EXCELLENTLY with one another. Overall, the dish was a winsome mix of its component parts where no one item overpowered everything else. Amazingly, despite the blending, you could taste each individual ingredient in every bite as well. Definitely a well-done dish!


I had both curry dishes on sticky rice ($3):

Sticky rice in unopened container.

Container opened; rice is still in a bag. Dang, you gotta work for your rice!

Yeah. Here's something else I'd never seen. What in the hey is up with the reed container? And why is the rice in a bag? I mean seriously, I had to carefully dump the rice out - the sticky rice was kinda sticking to the bag...  Anyhow, there was nothing special about the rice outside of its presentation. It was a good, tasty sticky rice that made for a good base upon which to ladle the curries.

Finally, I had it all with Thai beer. Specifically, Singha Premium Lager ($7):

It was a pretty mild-tasting beer. Not the best beer, but a very competent one that was certainly a very good accompaniment to the food, especially the chicken curry.

And that's it for now. Basic bottom line? Phayathai is a pretty Thai restaurant with very, very delectable food. I will most definitely be coming back!

***********************************

Map of restaurants I have reviewed:

Mouthwatering Montreal - Phayathai is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.