Thai Cafe

For a long time, the two main Thai restaurants in Harrisonburg, VA, were Thai Café and Taste of Thai. I was introduced to Thai Café and it was love at first bite. When I eventually got over to try Taste of Thai, I was impressed by the interior décor, the comfy booths, and the soft romantic lighting. At the end of the meal, though, I couldn’t see why Taste of Thai got so much buzz when it was more expensive and not nearly as tasty. Taste of Thai is the place you might take your date to impress them, but Thai Café is the place were you are going to have a happier belly and leave with more money left in your pocket.

My favorite food from Thai Café is the pho. I tried the other pho joint in Harrisonburg, but I always end up back at Thai Café. Even by looking at the tables, you know they are serious about pho because each table has a small lazy susan stocked with hoisin, sriracha, red pepper flakes in oil, fish sauce, chopsticks, and soup spoons. However, as you can see from the picture, I did take-out and Thai Cafe does a great job of setting you up with all the fixings.

The pho itself is fantastic. It has hints of anise and cinnamon and you have the option of chicken or beef broth. I tried the chicken broth once and have been a dedicated meat broth person since. Although you can get the usual meat, steak, and pho balls (as my best friend calls them), I always ask for fried tofu because it greedily soaks up the broth. The portions are huge with a regular size bowl costing around $6.95 and a large, $7.25.

Besides pho, Thai Cafe also has a good pad thai, ginger chicken, and rich curries. Nine chances out of 10 at any Thai restaurant, I will get the green curry (because green curry is my favorite). Thai Cafe's has sharp hints of ginger and spicy jalapenos, lightened with fresh cilantro, and offset by sweet coconut and basil.

Thai Cafe is tucked away behind the Target in Harrisonburg and it is part of a strand of three of the greatest ethnic restaurants that are all in one little strip mall. Thai Cafe is sandwhiched between Inca's Secrets, that has awesome fried yuko and Peruvian chicken, and Cafe Jacko, that serves up sushi, bento boxes, and udon soup. All three are a deal and will make it hard for you pick.   But, who says you can't get a pho starter, peruvian chicken for a main, and then an eel roll chaser.  I wouldn't judge. 

Pho Magic

In my “Blog Manifesto,” I wrote about what people on death row choose as their last meal.  I know what mine would be.  It would be a bowl of Pho. 

Pho is my ultimate comfort food.  I had my first bowl when I was 21 and I have had many, many bowls since.  I’m very lucky because my best friend is Vietnamese, and her mom is an excellent Pho maker.  Her mom jokes about the fact that I am an “Asian Baby” because I find such joy and happiness in Asian cooking.  And, of all Asian dishes, nothing makes me happier than a bowl of pho. 

At one point I had thought about having Kathy’s mom teach me her secrets, but I never was able to find a good time.  When I first started eating Pho, I did look into recipes.  It usually entails a rich broth made of ox tails, vegetables, and spices like anise and cinnamon.  The soup itself is made by adding in rice noodles, meat (or fried tofu, which is my favorite), and onions.  In addition, most restaurants then provide Hoisin sauce and sriracha and a plate of cilantro, basil, lime wedges, and bean sprouts for you to add according to your desires.   

Even though I know the components, the exact chemical equation and construction is a mystery.  The odd thing is that as much as I love Pho, I have come to have no interest in learning how to make it for myself.   The closest I came was buying a ramen style pho packet that came with rice noodles and two secretive packets.  I guess the main reason I have no interest in learning how to make Pho is that I think of Pho as a magic healing spell and knowledge of the enchantment seems blasphemous. 

To me, it seems strange that someone like me who spends so much time thinking about food, dissecting recipes, and identifying nuances, compositions, flavor profiles, textures,  variations, and subtleties (basically just over-analyzing food) could be happy not knowing about the mystery of her favorite food.  But, I think for all of us there is one food that you accept whole-heartedly as is.  Either it is a food your mom makes like no one else or your favorite dish at your favorite restaurant.  For those foods, something is taken away by finding out it is just food, an equation, a permutation of ingredients. 

So for me, Pho is off limits.  It is magic.  I have no need to conjure it up or find out how the trick is performed.  I am content just to sit in awe of it. 

The New Dining Hall Experience

For my restaurant review this week, I’m combining a review with a “food for thought.”  This entry came about when a comment on my “Food Porn” blog brought up how much he, too, has noticed the many ways food is taking over.  I was thinking about this over lunch on Wednesday when I realized that if you are looking for further evidence of the effect of foodism, you need not look further than my lunch. 

Yesterday, I had steamed Thai basil dumplings with sweet and spicy sauce and served with a sesame dressing salad.  I bought this from a place that also has four other kinds of dumplings and sauces, a Mongolian Grill, and a variety of handmade Sushi.  It is also a place where the tofu was provided fresh by a local farm.   

What fancy metropolitan place am I having lunch . . . a college campus in Harrisonburg, VA. 

Let this point sink in. . . I got an authentic Asian meal in a college dining hall.  Not a teriyaki termed concoction of dark brown and rice.  Not greasy Lo Mein.  Not a cornstarch thickened sweat and sour blob.  Dumplings.    



Display of other Asian dishes
offered by the dining hall. 



And no, these dumplings aren’t made, frozen, imported, and thawed.  These are made by four small Asian women who I can see manning the Mongolian grill, cooking the Pad Thai, sautéing fresh Bok Choy, and shaping each and every one of my dumplings.    Not only is it authentic looking in its preparation, these dumplings are good.  The wrapper is soft, the chicken is spicy and flavorful, and they are served warm and comforting. 

I’m not going to pretend like all the food at JMU is this impressive.  But, what I am going to say is that finding such food inclusion is something that is shaking up the formerly uncomplicated college dining hall.  Last year, I was at a school in Georgetown, Texas, in which you can get water to drink that is infused with either cucumbers or limes.  As a foodie, this intrigues me. 

I once read a really great articled called “From Spaghetti and Meatballs through Hawaiian Pizza to Sushi: the Changing Nature of Ethnicity in American Restaurants” by Liora Gvion and Naomi Trostler.  In the article, the women study menus from 1960’s through the 1990’s.  What they found is that you could trace growing acceptance of ethnic food by the changes in menus, and you could see when certain exotic foods and flavors became mainstream.  For instance, early menus show ethnic foods given American names or denatured of ethnicity with American style ingredients and preparation.  Over decades, menus eventually start to keep the original language/terminology of the dish and its exoticism becomes a selling point.  They also noticed that some menus that used to give an explanation of an ethnic food eventually dropped the explanation because that food had become so mainstream that is no longer needed an explanation.  The two authors even noticed changes in the 80s when herbs, like cilantro and basil, were added to descriptions as selling points. 

Gvion and Trostler’s article further supports my point that you can really see a change in how Americans (and the World for that matter), are seeking out new food.  People are no longer settling for straightforward cooking and upholding the classics, they want to see variation, options, choice, exoticism, and flavors.  I mean, if a dining hall can support local farms and offer homemade Asian dumplings, then that has got to say something about food culture.