Chicks And Pea.com Food and Friends

Thai Express at The Curve

As usual, the get together started off late (about 1 hour 30 minutes late :wall: ) we were supposed to meet at 11am in front of starbucks. Unfortunately Marianne (writer chick) had to go to the bank to settle some stuff first. Coincidentally, Chloe (manager chick) was waiting for Marianne to pick her up which left me (Wilfred : the pea) to sit at starbucks and update my blog regarding some interesting fact about starbucks.

The whole plan for today was supposed to take an hour or so to browse around The Curve (warning: lousy website ahead) and document their food offerings there, and then head of to a few of the choice restaurants and cafes to try out thier food and take a ton of pictures. Which leads me to the next problem... Chloe's camera (the only camera there :wall: ) was having some vision problems, something about the CCD konk-ing out.

With little time left and a 0.3 megapixel camera phone (courtesy of me) we set off to just go for food and see what happens from there.

We headed off to Thai Express.

First impressions of the place is alright, pretty clean, about 70% occupancy at about 1pm, which is a tad more than some of the cafes/restaurants in the area. There were two seating areas available, inside + outside, decided to sit outside cause the inside was a bit noisy and slightly cramped.

The Menu

The waiter approached us for our orders pretty quick, when we took a look at the menu, decided to ask him to give us a moment. The drinks were a little bit on the expensive side, here's some quick figures :nuts: (but then again, considering the spiciness of the dishes, i'd probably jack the prices up on drinks too if i was the manager)

Price range of the dishes were a little on the expensive side as well, variety of dishes include snacks, salads, curries, rice, noodles, soups, dessert, veggie, and laksa, which all range from about RM 5 to RM 16, the most expensive being the Curry Softshell Crab.

What did we order?

Here's the photos of each dish, including a group photo in the end...

let's go through the dishes one by one....

Chiang Main Mango Salad

Thinly shredded mango strips dressed with some mayonnaise, lots of nuts, lots of chili, spicy stuff, and more spicy stuff, did i mention that it's spicy? This was when we realized why the drinks were so expensive... all agreed that it was spicy. If you've never tasted sweet, sour, crunchy, zingy and very very very spicy in the same bite, then it's worth a try.

This was also the dish recommended by the waiter as a "must try" (I smell conspiracy...)

Fried Prawn Glass Noodle

First reaction was that it didn't look very appetizing, the glass noodle sat there in a lump like the cook just carelessly went and splattered it on the plate, limp and flat (Chloe's description : flubber ). The dish was accompanied by a small pile of chili flakes, nuts, the usual tomato and cucumber as garnish and four prawns (note: menu showed FIVE prawns)

After digging through thoroughly, we comcluded that pictures in the menu is decieving, and Exhibit A is the photo evidence of all the prawns after our thorough excavation of the glass noodle.

The taste however was surprisingly pretty okay, contrary to the dish's presentation, the glass noodle was cooked in some sort of XO sauce tasted kinda sweet and salty. The texture of the glass noodle was pretty okay as well... not too soft, not too hard, pretty good bite.

Olive Rice

Marianne : What's that on top of the rice?

Wilfred : Looks like canned dog food...

Chloe :

It wasn't canned dog food....

Taste was pretty alright, couldn't really taste the olive, either that or the three of us didn't know what olives taste like, chloe even suggested that maybe the rice was made of olive, but we quickly dismissed that idea.... Marianne did comment that they used good quality rice after close inspection of a spoon of rice at eye-level.

The sauce that came with it tasted pretty familiar, we couldn't put our finger on it, till it dawned on me.... it reminded me of the "chinese steamed fish dishes with the sweet and sour sauce"

The olive rice was overall pretty filling, tasted alright, but uneventful.

Seafood Phat Thai

This was the most dissapointing dish we had, hand down. Looks pretty much like the usual chinese "char kuey teow" except they used thinner "kuey teow" (0.5cm thinner according to Marianne). The dish is garnished with a small pile of chili flakes and nuts as well as tomato and cucumber (just like the Fried Prawn Glass Noodle).

After initial first bite, taste was a mild sweet and sour, the texture of the "kuey teow" tasted kinda plasticy (rubbery, and a little on the tough side)

Total failure.

Wrapping up

Overall, the experience was okay... can't exactly say that the food was "wicked", but the fried prawn glass noodle was a new experience, one thing we all enjoyed was the atmosphere, nothing very "thai" about it, but it was relaxing, sitting outside, under the shade of a awning with slight breeze was pretty comfortable for a close gathering of friends and some marathon chatting / gossiping session.

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