Thai Café

I like Thai food.  I am not exceptionally versed in it, but I certainly have my favorites and my not so favorites in town.  I wanted to try something new, and this one is in Broad Ripple, so it would be very convenient if I liked it.  I took the BFF with me to get us out of our usual Taste rut (where we almost always seem to end up, but we just love it so). 

So the décor of this place is a little strange.  The tables are pretty close together (although there were not a lot of other people there) and there was a strange blue hue over the back half of the restaurant which is where they first seated us, until I asked to be moved into natural light near the windows (high maintenance right?).  But seriously, it’s all part of the experience and the blueness is sort of strange.  Not sure if it was from the big TV or what, but it was kind of off-putting (you can still sort of see it in the pictures).

The first thing they brought us was the soup that came with our lunches.  I actually quite liked it.  It was really just a broth—there was no actual pieces of anything in it (ok, maybe some cilantro)—but it had a slight sour taste (lime maybe?) and quite a bit of spiciness to it. You could see little bits of chili oil on top. Especially with the little fried noodles they served on the side thrown in. It was a tasty little combo and cleared the sinuses quite well.  I don’t think BFF was as impressed though, she thought it was sort of boring.

We wanted to get an appetizer just to try something more than our lunch plates so we went with the Tao Hoo Tod, or deep fried tofu served with homemade peanut sauce ($6.95).  This dish was a disappointment for me.  I actually tend to like tofu, but it was so dry, and while it was described as deep fried, there was no discernable flavor in the barely crisp edges at all.  The peanut sauce wasn’t bad—it was sorely needed with that tofu, although later I saw that they also offer an option of a sweet chili sauce, which I wish I had known about, even though I don’t think it would have really saved it.  This dish would be a skip for me next time.  I will say, it was quite plentiful and would be very easy to share with several people.

For my lunch, I had the lunch special of drunken noodles ($7.95).  These were long flat rice noodles stir fried with lots of veggies (broccoli, mushrooms, onions, bean sprouts, carrots,  and pea shoots), meat (I had chicken), eggs, sweet soy sauce and basil.  This is the kind of flavor combo I like about Thai food—the slightly sweet soy with a fairly decent basil flavoring and just a bit of lime.  Unfortunately, the chicken bits suffered the fate of so many Asian stir fries and were a bit tough.  There was actually at least as much, if not more, of the veggies then there were of the noodles which was interesting as well.   I would put it in the middle of the pack as far as Thai noodle dishes I have had.   You certainly are getting a good portion of veggies with this dish though, if that is what you are looking for.

The service was fine.  But I wouldn’t call it overly friendly. And there never was more than one other table in there while we were there, although there were a few carry outs being picked up. I did like the way they asked you to tell them how hot you wanted your food on a scale of 1-10, and they seemed to do a decent job of meeting my expectation of my requested spice level—seems like “medium” at a lot of Thai restaurants can be shockingly spicy.   But since it has been awhile since I have done a Thai review, I am throwing the question out there, which restaurant has the best Thai food in town?

Thai Café

1041 Broad Ripple Avenue

Indy  46220

317/722-1008

www.indythaicafe.com