C THAI - THAI FOOD (KINDA SELF-EXPLANATORY, RIGHT?)

 

STUB REVIEW: C THAI -

GREAT THAI FOOD IN LITTLE ITALY?! 

Their website: http://cthai.ca/ 

7112 St Laurent Blvd, Montréal, QC H2S 3E2
Telephone: (514) 508-3792

Price Range:  $15 or less per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip  

 
 

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I don't understand the "C".

My favorite dish here: Chicken phad thai!

Mouthwatering summary:  Inexpensive, very tasty Thai food in Little Italy
Meal to try:  The chicken phad thai, with Golden bags as appetizers!

Oh, Montreal. City of culinary wonders. And incongruity. Did I mention the incongruity? Readers of this blog, if any, will remember that my very first individual review was on a French restaurant named Mrs. Amigos that is operated by Chinese staff (see post here:   http://mouthwateringmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/07/mrs-amigos-delightful-french-restaurant.html ). Well, I believe I've found another. In Montreal's Little Italy, home of Italian cafes, Italian trattorias, and a huge honking soccer store, we have... a LOVELY Thai restaurant named C Thai. 

Yeah, my mind reels a tad... but in a good way!

Basically, one of my friends (the same one who introduced me to Mrs. Amigos - I really, really, REALLY need to stop doubting him) told me about this great little place called C Thai in Little Italy. According to him, the place is inexpensive and tasty! And so, off we went at the first available lunchtime, because, seriously, do I sound like I could resist that siren song?

Upon arriving, one of the things I noticed was just how packed the place was. There were spots still, but it was definitely good and busy! When I sat down to look at the menu, the first likely reason for why it was packed became pretty obvious: C Thai has a pretty good, inexpensive lunch menu. Each meal comes with a soup, imperial roll, and dessert. Most of them cost $10.95, and the most expensive one is $12.95. 

After looking at the menu full of things that I couldn't even begin to pronounce correctly, I did my best to order dishes using the Thai names. The waiter (bless his good-naturedness) politely humored my attempts with a smile (god, I'm such a tourist sometimes...). 

So, first up, the Golden Bags ($2.95, and yes, that is exactly what they're called):

I really do hate how modern English usage has led me to not really like the word "bag" too much. So many not-quite-right connotations... Ack! Just eat the dumplings and forget that train of thought. :P

These were fried chicken dumplings served with plum sauce. Looking at them, you can see precisely why they were called Golden Bags - they resemble bound cloth sacks, golden in color. Though tiny, these little suckers were positively bursting with flavor. The filling was finely minced, slightly (ever so slightly) spicy, and salty chicken. The shell, meanwhile, was just crispy, crispy, crispy! Oh, yes! The plum sauce was a little tangy and thicker than expected, and really added to the dumpling's taste. Although, I would recommend that you have half the order with the sauce and half without. The dumplings were pretty damn fine even without the sauce, and it's worth it to savor them both ways.

Next came the wonton soup that was a part of the lunch special:

Nothing especially special about this soup. That said, it tasted just a bit spicier and had more of a fish accent than comparable soups. Still though, just a regular appetizer soup. Moving on...

We have the imperial roll that came with the lunch special:

These were just as crispy as the Golden Bags and were fantastic! The filling of the rolls hit a lot of the same notes that the filling in the Golden Bags did, even though it wasn't chicken. I guess they used the same seasonings? Either way, very delectable!

And now, the main events. First, the Pla Pad Khing ($11.95):

Pla Pad Khing. Say that three times. Go on, I dare ya!

This is a dish of fish filets, stir fried with ginger (a LOT of it), mushrooms, and onions - all next to a scoop of white rice. The fish was exquisite - it was very soft and smooth, but still lightly springy. Normally, when fish is soft, it also has a tendency to completely crumble if you so much as look at it. Not this! While you could casually cut it apart with your fork, and it did not disintegrate! Always a plus with me! Also, as I'd mentioned before, there was a huge amount of ginger in there. Every bite was full of that unmistakable ginger taste. Being the fan of ginger that I am, this was a very welcome sensation. Interestingly enough, for all the strength of the ginger flavor, the flavors of the other ingredients shone on through as well. Overall, well-done, C Thai chefs!

We also have everyone's favorite Thai dish (or at least, the one that most of us will have heard of, at least), the Phad Thai ($10.95):

Simplistically, this is merely stir-fried noodles with chunks of chicken. I will now smack myself for so thoroughly underselling this dish. *whack* 

Oh WOW, this. Was. GREAT. Where to begin? First, I suppose, the noodles:  They were chewier than the pad thai noodles in other places, but in a decidedly very good way. They had a sense of... heft, I would say (yes, I am well aware of how bizarre that sounds. Shut up!). As you're chewing, it really feels like it's something substantive, rather than something you're just sloppily downing without a care (which, sadly, is what pad thai noodles at a lot of places feel like). And so the heft was a good thing. Next, the flavors - well, you know how with the Pla Pad Khing (however that's pronounced), I said that there was a very strong taste of ginger? Here, we had the complete opposite - no one flavor dominated anything else, and ALL the flavors blended together into a harmonious, strong taste. You could taste big hints of sugariness (from cane, maybe? Not sure - really not a Thai expert at all), the brininess (I guess of the fish sauce?), and the solid chickenness (that's an invented word, I know). The sauce was thick and gooey, and my mouth very literally watered from the first nanosecond the noodles touched the tip of my tongue.  If only every bit of food I ate did the same thing...

And now, we find ourself with dessert (again, included in the special), a white (I believe coconut) pudding over tapioca buds:

Dessert. Sigh, son, I am disappoint.

Sadly, this was...disappointing. I don't know if this is standard or not, but this thing was mildly sweet and HEAVILY salty. My friend and I speculated that the chef might have accidentally put salt in with his sugar when prepping the dish, but in the event that this wasn't the case, I will say that this type of dessert is not for me.

Overall though, just because the ending didn't match up to the high bar set by the appetizers and mains, my dining experience wasn't really diminished. After all, I didn't come here for dessert. I came for everything else. And C Thai delivered in SPADES, and then some. I will be coming back to try the rest of the menu, that's for sure. Just one thing for all of you to note though - do set aside a bit of extra time if you're going for lunch. Like I'd said at the outset, the place was packed (between noon and 1pm), and as such, service was a touch slow. Not deal-breakingly slow, but not instantaneous by any stretch. If you can make it there for a late lunch (as others I've since spoken to typically do with this place), the service will be much, much faster. Still and all, I will say this:  IT IS WORTH THE WAIT.

And now, I go back to trying to pronounce words that I have no right trying to articulate :P.

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