Menu features five curry dishes with different vegetables and spices, all cooked with coconut milk
Stephanie Yuen
Sun
Owner Matchima Noikumta of Go Thai. ‘We love to serve special seasonal and original dishes using very authentic ingredients.’ Photograph by : Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
It is not uncommon to see Southeast Asian restaurants offering cuisine from Singapore, Malaysian and Indonesian on the same menu. Thai restaurants, however, seem to be on a league of their own and often adhere to serving nothing but Thai dishes only.
My recent visit with a couple of friends to Go Thai Restaurant in New Westminster proved just that with an exception — their mixed dessert menu, which features carrot cake, cheesecake and assorted ice cream along with deep-fried banana.
“We just want to give them more dessert varieties,” explained chef and owner Matchima Noikumta, a VCC-trained chef.
Go Thai moved into the corner of Columbia and Braid about two years ago.
Besides the regular menu, Matchima also posts chef’s specials on the board in the dining room. “We love to serve special seasonal and original dishes using very authentic ingredients. I use my own recipes for unique flavour, such as the fresh chili, lime and spices in the papaya salad and the homemade marinade for the Thai wing.”
We started off by sipping fresh coconut juice that was a bit nutty, not too sweet and very refreshing from a young coconut — a nice way to begin a Thai dinner.
Though I am always skeptical about deep-fried wonton, the Go Thai Delight with satays, spring rolls, wontons, wings and prawn wraps seemed to be a nice appetizer platter for sharing. The shredded jicama in the rolls was delightful, as were the tender satays and the wings; the usage of phyllo for the prawn wraps was a positive surprise. And yet, the wontons were once again as expected: plain and boring.
The taste and aroma of the hot and spicy Thai soup is one of the reasons I enjoy Thai cuisine. Needless to say, a tom yum goong was in the order. Not knowing the strength of Go Thai’s star system, we settled for the one-star soup. For my liking of real spicy food, I would have asked for three stars. Fumed with lemon grass, galangal and lime flavour, this soup was loaded with prawns, squids, mussels and mushrooms.
The menu lists five Thai curry dishes: red, green, yellow, panang and matsaman, all cooked with coconut milk and with a choice of chicken, pork, beef, tofu or prawns ($3 extra).
Red, green and yellow curries differ in their colours, herbs and spices. Panang curry is from Malaysia and uses less coconut milk. Matsaman curry is from India, with key herbs including cardamom and tamarind.
Different roots and vegetables also go with different curries. For example, bamboo shoots are in the red curry, eggplant in the green, potatoes and onions in the yellow curry. Panang curry favours lime leaves and basil and matsaman includes yam, peanuts and pineapple.
We opted for the green curry, since we all love eggplant. The thick, creamy, steaming curry did not disappoint us.
The drunken squid with chili was a bit chewy and not “drunk” enough for me, but my friends quite enjoyed it.
The crispy noodles and vegetables with chicken reminded me of a northern Chinese dish where they deep-fry the noodles before pouring sauce on top. Go Thai’s crispy noodles tasted pretty good but were nothing near crispy; they were also too saucy and included far too many bamboo shoots.
Deep-fried banana with vanilla ice cream for dessert was a must when I visited Thai restaurants. This time, I asked for mango ice cream instead.
One bite into it, I knew I had made the right switch.
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GO THAI RESTAURANT
502 E. Columbia Street, New Westminster
604-524-3453/604-524-3493
Open Monday to Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.; Thursday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday from 4 to 10 p.m.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
