Hot hot eat: The alligator dish was appropriately spicy but didn’t quite taste like chicken as the menu promised (photo by michael persico).

Desperately Seeking Spicy

Thai Chef & Noodle Fusion brings the fire.

by Adam Erace

Even at Thai restaurants where the staff speaks solid English, the phrase “very, very, very spicy” consistently gets lost in translation. Between the dining room and the kitchen, the language is often jumbled into something more like “safe for old lady with acid reflux.”

Over the years I’ve tried several variations: Extra hot. Thai-style. I once told a waitress to “kill me, please.” Invariably, what arrives packs the heat of the Detroit Lions’ offense.

It’s an all-too-common complaint leveled against our local Thai contingent, but the counter-argument is that as Westerners, we really can’t want our food that spicy. Surely, we when say “spicy” we really mean TGI-Friday’s-jalapeño-popper-spicy, Tostitos-salsa-spicy, not spicy like they do it on the street carts of Bangkok, where the vendors don’t care whether you like it or not.

There’s a term for this injustice—racial profiling—and many of our local Thai restaurants are guilty.

Enter Thai Chef & Noodle Fusion, touted as the savior of Philly’s slacking Thai scene nearly the second it moved onto Chestnut Street.

Inside, the place looks like a Wyland mural on acid. On one wall, a great white charges. A mermaid happens by on another. Flotsam and jetsam glower from a starfish-stamped cave, ogling your wild boar in red curry. Paper suns dangle. IKEA lights glow. Stick-on decals of snowmen and Santa make the Chestnut-facing windows looks like a second-grade classroom.

The restaurant has definite quirky charms, like the relentlessly sweet, easily frazzled waitresses that twist each straw’s wrapper into a lopsided paper heart—poor-man’s origami. But what about the food? Is this curry aquarium the Promised Land devotees have been purporting it to be? The cure to our burning hunger for authentic, amazing Thai food? Thai Chef, when we ask you to ignite our meal with the fire of a thousand suns, will you bow to our wishes no matter how white our faces?

The answer, fleshed out of over the course of my meal, was yes—and no. Thai Chef, you are the wishy-washy object of my affection, stringing me along with fresh, greaseless spring rolls, then letting me down with a clump of mee krob (fried rice noodles) with the taste and texture of a Rice Krispie Treat.

Both bites appeared on the Thai Treasure sampler, a fitting microcosm of this restaurant, full of highs (sweet, crispy corn-and-shrimp cakes; flaky, flavorful moon dumplings filled with pork and shaped like snail shells) and lows (fishy steamed crab dumplings; dull fried tofu). In the one mouthful, the satay offered some of the blandest chicken I’ve ever eaten but also some of the tastiest, most nuanced peanut sauce.

Loaded with chicken, mushrooms and bell peppers, the tom yum soup sang with lime and lemongrass, but lacked in the spice department.

Conversely, the Winning Alligator honored my extra-spicy request with double dose of chilies, ginger and fresh green peppercorns clustered along their little edible stems like olive-colored couscous-sized grapes.

Mixed with jasmine rice, bell peppers and green beans, the gator tasted like the other white meat, though I’d have to disagree with Thai Chef’s menu claim that “Customer vote the meat soft tender, better than chicken.” Some pieces were tender indeed; others left me wondering if said customers were more accustomed to chewing Crocs.

As the yardstick by which most Southeast Asian spots are measured, I was expecting a knockout from the pad Thai. The deep scoop of rice noodles certainly looked the part, mounded with a generous snowball of crabmeat (chicken or shrimp also available), bordered by tofu and bean sprouts. But the sauce glossing each crushed peanut-dusted strand was overwhelmingly sweet. Where was the brightness of lime juice? The pep of fresh cilantro? All I tasted was sugar and sinking disappointment.

Even dessert possessed a sharper balance, with lightly salted sticky rice crowned with a cupola of scored fresh mango. Sesame seeds. Coconut milk. Though the traditional duo ended the meal on a high note, it wasn’t nearly enough to officially crown Thai Chef the fairest in the land. But hey, at least they bring the fire.

Thai Chef & Noodle Fusion