Finally got to try out a restaurant near my work place with my brother a few weeks ago for lunch. First stop, Thai House because we had an Entertainment Book coupon good for a buy one get one free entree up to $15. Thai House is located on Kingsway at Station Square.

It gets kind of busy during lunch time, but after a 10 minute wait, we were seated. We ordered the Gai Curry, and the Pad Thai Pe Ses, as well as a bowl of rice. After a short wait the Gai Curry and plain steamed white rice came first. Gai Curry is chicken with yellow curry and coconut milk. This is my favourite kind of curry because of the coconut milk. It had a little bit of heat and was mixed with some bell peppers, onions, and bamboo shoots. It was a bit sweet too because they added pineapples. The curry had slices of chicken that were very tender. This is a really good dish.

The Pad Thai we got was the “New Edition”. I ordered this one because it didn’t come with any prawns or other seafood. I chose chicken for the meat, and asked for peanuts on the side… To them on the side meant in a big pile on the side of the same plate lol.. I sent it back, and the peanuts came in a separate container. I didn’t like this dish very much. It was a big portion but the noodles were very ketchupy and sticky. The noodles were chewy, but the flavour of the sauce was just way too similar to ketchup for me. I’m not very familiar with pad thai, so I’m not sure if this is just because it is the “New Edition”. Again the chicken was tender, but I didn’t notice any eggs mixed in. It had a little bit of spice.

I’m not sure about the cleanliness of this place because my glass of water was a bit dingy, and there was a nice long horizontal crack down the center of it. I’m also a bit confused because going to the their website, this location isn’t listed. Did ownership change? They still have the same logo…

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Thai House Royale Restaurant
4600 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC

(604) 438-2288

www.thaihouse.com

Green Basil is another busy restaurant for lunch on Kingsway in South Burnaby. It is located steps away from another popular lunch joint, Sushi Garden.

I went ahead and got their daily lunch special because seemed like the most valuable choice. For $6.98 you’d get a choice of curry, with coconut rice, spring roll, soup and salad. Red curry with Pork and Basil sounded really yummy that day, so that was my choice of curry.

I went with 3 other people, and we all got the lunch special. Our 4 spring rolls came on one plate, with one little bowl of salad. I was a little confused, I looked over at other tables, and they all had 1 littel bowl of salad, doesn’t matter the table had 1 person, or 4 people. Way to cheap out on iceberg lettuce. The spring rolls were crispy but pretty bland, there weren’t much ingredients in it too.

My Red Curry with Pork and Basil was listed with 3 hot peppers on the menu. It wasn’t overwhelmingly spicy, but it definitely had some nice heat in it. I liked the coconut based red curry. It had plenty of red and green peppers and bamboo shoots. The pork was really tender. It was nice, and the portion was big.

My friend got Fried rice with Garlic and Chicken, and the first thing he said when the dish arrived was ‘where’s the chicken?’ After some flipping around he finally found couple tiny tiny pieces of ‘chicken’. He didn’t enjoy his meal too much because the whole time he just couldn’t get over the non-existence of chicken in his fried rice. I don’t blame the guy.

Everything was all right until we got our bill. At the beginning of the meal we asked for tea, and the tea came with a hefty price tag of $5.95. The waiter didn’t tell us about that when we asked for tea. $6 for tea that tasted like warm water. $6 for tea! $6 for tea in an Asian restaurant, seriously?

The curry was average, and I just didn’t like the idea of the restaurant cheaping out here and there. Thumbs down.

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Green Basil
4623 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC V5H
(604) 439-1919
www.greenbasilthai.com

Today I went on a lunch hunt to Lhy Thai in Burnaby. I have to say, this place looks really ghetto from the outside. Really ghetto. As I walked in, I was immediately hit with this funky mix smell of grease, food, and wet.. dogs? Not sure what it was but not very pleasing.

The place is really small, and busy, but I did get a table right away. When I sat down, the waitress was wiping our table because previous customers had just left. The cloth that she used left my table smelling like bleach for quite sometime. Again, not very pleasing, since now it’s a mix smell of grease, food, wet dogs and bleach. Bleh.

It wasn’t too long after I got there that I realized that there was only one waitress working there.  It took forever for us to order our food. This is not very good if you have work to get back to. We should have ordered right away like the table beside us. And it took forever for our food to come. This is not very good when you’re really hungry, and the people came after you keep getting their food first.

Anyways, on to the food. We ordered Stuffed Chicken wings for appetizer. I had combo #1, which has chicken red curry, spring roll, chicken satay and cucumber salad. And my friend had Pad Thai.

The the stuffing in the chicken wings is similar to the stuffing in Vietnamese spring rolls. It had clear vermicelli and minced meat. The whole thing is boneless although there was a random shattered chicken bone in my stuffed chicken wing. And later I found my friends’ chicken wings also had random bones in them. So I guess they did that on purpose. It does taste pretty good though! I would order it again.

I was pretty satisfied with my lunch combo. The chicken satay with the peanut sauce on it was really good. It’s sweet, and it goes really well with the rice. The spring roll was crunchy, big and drizzled with sweet and sour sauce. The chicken curry is also good, but nothing special. There were more bamboo shoots in it more than chicken. I asked for spicy, but it didn’t taste spicy at all. Maybe next time I’ll ask for extra spicy.

I also tried my friend’s Pad Thai, which she ordered it to be spicy also, and it was very spicy! And very tomatoey. It was much spicier than the red curry, but still tasty.

I also had a dessert there, because I saw Coconut Ice cream on the menu. Mmm I love coconut. The coconut ice cream there is soooo goood! The 2 scoops of coconut ice cream was topped with real coconut meat, and coconut sauce. So coconuty, so yummy.

I think I can only describe the food at this place as homey. It’s definitely comfort food, and I also found myself to have sticky hands from the all sauces before I started eating. Weird.

I would give higher ratings if they didn’t have the funky smell and if the service wasn’t so slow today, because the food was 100 times better than Charm Modern Thai. And it’s cheap! It’s so cheap, our  appetizer, 3 entrées and dessert came to  $30.98 dollars. And, they take Visa / MasterCard too! That’s pretty huge for a small Asian restaurant.

Tip: Order right away as you sit, because it might take a while for the one waitress to come back to you.

Most popular items: combos 1, 2, and 3. #9, #13, and #17.

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Lhy Thai
7357 Edmonds St.
Burnaby, BC V3N1A9
Tel: (604) 526-8085