April 13th is Thai New Year’s day or Songkran Day. In Thailand, April 13-15th are national holidays and, much like Christmas holidays in the States, people will travel home to spend time with their families. April is the hottest month of the year in Thailand, so the most fitting way to celebrate is with water. Traditionally, you would pour a little bit of scented water (with jasmine or perfume) over other people’s hands or shoulders as you give them well wishes. Very calm and respectful. Nowadays, it is more like public street water fights, with powerful water guns or plain old buckets of water. It’s a lot of fun when you want to be part of the Songkran spirit. Otherwise, it’s actually really annoying (who wants to get wet when they are, let’s say, on their way to work or a date).
I couldn’t do any of that in New York – definitely no water fights. It’s still pretty cold here and people would surely look at me funny if I shoot somebody with a huge water gun. So, Jeff and I went to a nice Thai dinner instead. We tried a new restaurant called Lotus of Siam, on 9th Street and 5th Avenue (where Cru used to be).
The décor was plain but nice. The bar is situated at the front of the restaurant next to the host area. The dining room is sunken down. It has a bamboo floor, bamboo-looking tables, and matching color chairs. Everything is actually pretty matchy-matchy. I do like the ceiling though – it looks like the old tin ceiling. The kitchen is off to the left of the dining room, with partly frosted automatic glass doors. They look kind of odd.
I had read the New York magazine’s review of the restaurant, which says that they have an impressive wine list. I would have to agree, especially for a Thai restaurant. I ordered a glass of Reisling.
Their menu was quite extensive though most of the dishes are what you would normally see at any other Thai restaurants in Manhattan – a lot of fried rice and stir fried noodle dishes. Because they are higher end and pricey, I was hoping that they would have more of the family style dishes. Anyways, the food was delicious. We shared a Som Tum (green papaya salad) as an appetizer. This dish is so simple and every Thai restaurant in Manhattan offers it, but it could be a hit or a miss. It definitely was a hit here. The flavors were right on – sour, sweet, salty, but not too spicy. Jeff then ordered a soft shell crab “drunken” noodles and I ordered prawns with tamarind (i.e. nam pla wan) and chili-lime sauce. Jeff said that his dish was alright. I really liked mine. I haven’t had Nam Pla Wan sauce in a very long time and it’s not something that you can find easily in New York. So I was really excited when I saw it on the menu. My dish came with 5 big prawns grilled to perfection. I finished the whole Nam Pla Wan sauce – it was very good. Though I have to say that it’s still not as good as my grandma’s :)
We decided to skip desserts. They have about 5-6 items on their dessert menu – traditional Thai desserts like Tum Tim Krob and sticky rice with sweet custard (sang ka ya) and ice cream – but we weren’t in the mood for those. So we looked up bakeries in the area for some cookies or cakes. We ended up going to Milk and Cookies on Commerce and 7th Avenue South instead. Jeff got 2 cookies and I got a chocolate whoopie pie and a white chocolate macadamia cookie (this has been my most favorite cookie these days).
Overall, a good night of eating (as usual).
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