A Taste of Thai.. at Chef Choi

Thai cuisine, known for balancing sour, sweet, and salty flavors with chili-infused heat, is represented at Chef Choi’s this week, by dishes of every persuasion.. myriad salads e.g. fresh vegetables or dried shrimp or deep-fried crispy fish, thai fish cakes, sashimi prawns, thai duck noodles and seafood completes the repertoire in the form of the legendary thai styled crab in basil and chili thai pastes. Actually Chef Choi does mainly a Chinese menu on regular days, so if you want to partake of this lovely Thai menu, you simply need to pick up the phone and place your order.

Most of these Thai dishes originate in Bangkok, and the owner cum chef has recreated these all time Thai favourites to perfection. These salads are fresh and brightly flavored. The shrimp salad with a sharp and tangy lime/chili/fish sauce that spills over onto a bed of onions, lime and ginger bits makes a substantial and satisfyingly complex salad. It is zesty and a real appetite inducer. This is their version of the miang kham, where lettuce leaf is employed instead of the usual betel leaf, but it turned out to be just as tasty. Heat freaks, take a note.. the sauces that are mixed specially by the Chef, are all subtly different, but have one thing in common – they are all Thai specialties that will burn the taste buds right off your tongue!

Kai Sam Yang -fresh lettuce and dried shrimp in Thai style

The tiny shrimp salad with a sharp and tangy lime/chili/fish sauce that spills over onto a bed of onions, lime and blue ginger bits makes a substantial and satisfyingly complex salad.

One of the guests demonstrates how to wrap the perfect bite size salad!

Nam Prik Kapi – fresh vegetables served with Thai shrimp sauce

The Thai sauce for this dish, is a lot darker and tastes heavier, like the belacan. It is, in fact, a Thai belacan sauce. Dunk the deep fried eggplant into the sauce and eat it just like that. The flavours and the burn from the chili are superb! Other veges include the long beans, four angled beans, cabbage and cucumbers.

kung cheh nam pla – prawn in fish sauce.

These prawns were swimming minutes before they were prepared for our dinner.  They are served raw with a tangy sauce made from fish sauce, lime, garlic, chillies and sugar.

How pretty is that?

Ah.. the all time favourite Thai snack, tod mun pla – Thai fish cake. These are again freshly made into patties and fried just in time for dinner. Superbly tasty.

Grilled pork ribs

Actually, we heard over the grapevine that there will be another preview at Chef Choi soon. This time featuring the BBQ range! Wow.. we can’t wait. Slabs of fat, juicy grilled pork ribs were served to taunt us, and remind us of better things to come!

yam pla duk foo -deep-fried fish with mango chilli sauce

This deep-fried fish  was crispier than usual because, the Chef used Siakap instead of Catfish. The floss of fish quickly melts into the mango chilli sauce which makes the dish exquisite in texture as in taste.

My favourite of the night – the crabs! Poo Nam Prik Prao, I ate a whole load of these.

The crabs in Thai basil and chilli was better than I had expected. Using local mud crabs they might have been slightly smaller than Sri Lankan crabs but the flavour was awesome! The white flesh is far sweeter than any other type of crab if you ask me. The intrinsic flavours of the crabs was intact and went fabulously well with the Thai basil chilli sauce.

Thai Duck Noodles with shredded duck and pork skin crackling

You may choose to add more crunchy pig skin if your heart is strong, and unafraid!

Chef Choi’s own homemade special egg noodles. Divine!

tab tim krob -red rubies dessert to complete the dinner.

Actually, when we were invited to taste the legendary Thai duck noodles, at Chef Choi, we did not expect 6 full blown dishes to precede it! Well, we have since come to anticipate, that this, is how they eat at Chef Choi! The duck noodle soup was hearty and sweet from being on the boil for ages – the succulence of pork and duck bone flavour really shone through. What you see on top of the noodles are shredded duck meat, bean sprouts and.. crunchy pig’s skin ! You can choose from a selection of either kuey teow, egg noodles or beehoon. I liked them all actually.

We highly recommend the Thai Menu at Chef Choi. Don’t forget to pre-book before you go for dinner.