A few weeks ago I was complaining about my sucky lunch at Thanying, and fellow readers were quick to suggest better alternatives. We tried Andrew's recommendation first, and he was right. We liked it enough to return within a week. Really, this is not the first time I've heard good things about this place, but something had always distracted me from eating there. Now I wish that I had discovered this place sooner.
First Thai Food occupies a corner coffeeshop along Purvis Street, where it counts at least three other Thai restaurants as neighbours and competitors. Unlike the other three, it is not airconditioned and there isn't a scrap of Thai silk or gold leaf anywhere. One of the plain tiled walls is decorated with images of Buddha, King Chulalongkorn and oddly, Keanu Reeves. The glass topped tables have a shelf for cutlery and magazines, and diners help themselves to free tissue paper. We ordered by ticking on a form, and someone brought the order to the kitchen. The menu features expected items like tom yam and green curry, but there are one or two more exotic dishes, like the rainbow salad-topped betel leaves, for the adventurous.
The food was generally excellent. Fish otak was a revelation, I was used to skinny dabs of fish paste and did not expect a leaf bowl gently coddling a custard-like, spicy fish mousse punctuated with the taste of basil and other unfamiliar Thai herbs. Tom Yam soup came with generous amounts of prawns and straw mushrooms and the soup was lip-puckeringly sour, explosively hot yet shrimpy-savoury-sweet. The papaya and mango salads tasted as good as those I've had in Thailand, refreshingly sweet, salty and tangy at first, then the insidious heat asserted itself until I was grabbing blindly for the tissue papers, exactly the sinus-clearing experience I was looking for. The belacan (fermented shrimp paste) that came with the vegetable omelet got my salivary glands working in overdrive, being incredibly pungent, salty and earthy, oh, I could eat bowls and bowls of rice with this condiment alone. Everything tasted distinct and balanced. If I have to find fault, it would be the tired cucumber chunks that served as garnish, and more seriously, the needless use of MSG in some of the dishes. The cooks had probably toned down the cooking to suit local palates, this was not like eating at Chatuchak market or the back lanes of Bangkok where I am not yet used to the piquancy of some ingredients, nonetheless, it fulfilled my expectations most adequately. And it was not expensive either, a very filling meal for two would not cost more than $50, so we will definitely return to try the basil-fried pork and the pomfret doused with chilli sauce.
First Thai Food
23 Purvis Street
Tel: Don't know, they don't take reservations, apparently.
