now 9/10 on the list. but swongy's not that excited.

so i had an earlier post about smile politely's list of top 10 restaurants that have opened in the past decade.

decided to check out thara thai for linner (meal btwn the times of lunch and dinner) with tina and laura.

the place is on bloomington rd right next to a econolodge. yeahhhhhhh

we were planning on getting food to go because a) the reviews said the place was kinda dirty and b) we could enjoy our thai with white wine in the apt and day drink. i hate how early it gets dark now..haha

once we got inside, we saw that the place wasn't dirty at all and we were def too hungry to bring the food home.

i ordered the basil chicken, laura: yellow curry w/ chicken, tina: beef pad see ew, and we shared an order of crab ragoons. my basil chicken was probs the worst i've ever had. it was basically pieces of chicken and veggies stir fried in a generic brown sauce with some basil leaves thrown in. it was so bland. we tried adding soy sauce but that just made it more like some random chop suey dish than basil chicken. it ended up working well for drunk food that night but otherwise it would've just taken space in the back of my fridge and then thrown out a few months later.

laura's yellow curry was alright. again, there was a lack of flavor. there was too much coconut milk and not enough spice. and there wasn't that much veggies either. but it def was better than the basil chicken.

but --our meal wasn't a total bust. tina's pad see ew, which was recommended by a review she read, was pretty good. it had a good balance between sweet and savory. the noodles were stir-fried well and had a good wok-iness* to them. the beef was flavorful, cut thin and tender. and they served it with chinese broccoli that was a little undercooked, leaving it crunchy and mustardy. you could taste each component separately and it wasn't a big pile of bleh like my basil chicken.
*(yeah sorry bout that but that's like direct translation from a chinese word i'd use in a convo with the 'rents. what i'm trying to say is -- the noodles were fried enough to have a little bit of burnt goodness... if you're still lost, sorry. i suck at explaining things.)

the reviews also reccomended the crab raggoons. i rarely eat crab raggoons because they're usually on the american side of menus and i forget about them. sorryyy. and like really...they're just fried wonton skins filled with cream cheese! but anywho we ordered them and they were actually pretty good! the cream cheese filling had some celery giving it some texture, which is always good in my book. and they added some spice to it to give some smokiness. all of that with the thai sweet and sour sauce made a great bite.

but would i go back to thara? probably not. while the crab raggoons and pad see ew were good, they weren't worth the money (the pad see ew was like $12 and the crab ragoons were $7) or the trek out there. overall, the place was expensive and very medicore, if not less. i would much rather go to basil thai.

now i'm nervous to go to taco loco aka the last one i haven't gone to on the list. if thara had failed me, how's taco loco gonna go??

ps- im gonna start brining my camera or taking pics on my phone so my posts are a little more interesting!