Last night I hit up Charm Modern Thai in Yaletown, Vancouver with Dee and a few friends. The restaurant has very nice ambiance, it is dim, modern and clean. However, this place started off strong, then it went down down in the earlier round.
I started off the night with a Sukumvit lycheetini, which was delicious. And coincidentally my other friends also got other lychee drinks. Who doesn’t like lychee? I took a look at the menu and decided to go with the 3 course set dinner ($28.75). Having entrées averaging $18 dollars, the set dinner seemed to be the best value as you also get an appetizer and a dessert. For my 3 course dinner I picked the Tom kha lobster bisque for appetizer, Coconut cream scallops for entrée, and Vanilla bean tapioca for dessert.
The food didn’t take too long to come. The lobster bisque has one small piece of lobster in it. It is sour and spicy. The spiciness was not overwhelming, but it will stay tingling in your month for quite sometime. I didn’t love it, I didn’t dislike it either. I had a bite of my friend’s duck spring rolls appetizer, I would recommend it over the lobster bisque. After the drinks and appetizers we all agreed that we would come back to this place, and we all looked forward to our entées. The star rating at this point was 5/5. But this is when it starts to go downhill…
I was not impressed with my coconut cream scallops. The scallops didn’t taste like they’ve been seasoned at all, the coconut cream sauce was rather bland. It was literally unseasoned seared scallops with bland sauce on top, no variety of flavors going on. Bleh. There were 5 scallops in total, and I started offering them away after 3. My friend’s beef short ribs curry however, was a lot tastier, but it was spicy! The meat is tender, it falls off the bone, and the pineapple in it gives it a variety in taste. Dee also ordered a Pad thai on the side because he’s never had pad thai. I feel bad for his first pad thai experience, because it was really dry and sweet. There were 5 of us sharing it, we didn’t finish it. We were also given rice with our entrées, but I was disappointed that it wasn’t coconut rice. Isn’t coconut rice a standard in Thai restaurants? The star rating for this place has gone from a 5 to a 3 after the entrée. Now we’re skeptical about the dessert.
Ok here’s the desserts, picture time! but wait…, what is that? It’s a hair on Dee’s dessert! Gross. We let the waitress know right away, and she was really apologetic about it, and brought him a new one. Good thing we were taking pictures! Dee ordered a chili chocolate dessert. It was interesting to eat it, because it is very chocolaty, but the after taste is spicy! It’s fun to eat it at first, but after a couple bites, it gets a little too dramatic for your tongue as it goes from sweet! to spicy! back to sweet! back to spicy! My tapioca was pretty good, I think it was probably the best one out of the 3 on the set dinner menu. Do not order the ice cream from the set dinner menu, it is a tamarind and green tea ice cream, and they do not mix well together. The star rating is about 2/5 by this point.
After our dessert the waitress came back and offered us 5 lychee flavored shots to apologize for the hair on Dee’s dessert. That was very nice of her to try to make things right. And the effort earned their star redemption back to 3/5.
We all left with one agreement, Charm Modern Thai is good to come for drinks and appetizers, not so much for other things. The service was excellent, however it all really comes down to how your food taste. And if you’re wondering why it ended up with 2 stars out of 5, well, my friend got food poisoning after. It might have been the beef short ribs, it might have been the duck appetizer. Sucks for him and Charm Modern Thai. It is not nice to ask your customers to bring their iron stomachs.
Charm Modern Thai
1269 Hamilton St
Vancouver, BC V6B
(604) 688-9339
http://www.charmmodernthai.com/
2 Comments on "Charm Modern Thai, one rollercoaster dining ride."
The food poisoning could have also been from the wine that I’d had there, but who knows! If our waitress from that night is reading this; please check your Balthasar wine to make sure it’s not making your customers ill! And thanks for the good service, we appreciated your attentiveness.
maybe you had a bad day.
the food was ok, i’d stll recommend it to other ppl ……….
their ice cream tasted like bubble tea! XD
i really loved the ambiance and the waitresses were really super nice!