Dang's Thai Kitchen

You've got to hear The Gourds bluegrass cover of Gin N' Juice, it's fantastic and apropos of nothing or something.

Man, that stuffed calamari looks fantastic.

http://guiltycarnivore.com/2009/04/26/dangs-redux/

After Dang Boonyakamol's departure to Red Onion Thai in NW, I wondered if Dang's Thai Kitchen out on Hwy 43 would remain as good as it was during his tenure there (and also if they would keep the name). Dang himself reported that the kitchen had inherited his method of cooking their dishes, but I hadn't read any real followup.

After a meal last night, I'm pleased to report the Dang's in LO still has its fastball. Chicken in panadanus leaves are still ethereal, served with that kickass dipping sauce. The Tom Kha still has the right level of bright galangal flavor, and avoids being cloying and sweet. And one of my favorite dishes, the green curry beef, is still amazingly tender and is swimming in one of the most complex green curries around. Also had the black pepper/garlic stir-fry last night, and it had a delightful toasted garlic flavor accompanying chicken that was crisped up just a little.

If you're not near Red Onion, Dang's TK is still kicking ass out in LO.

Three months removed from Flynn's last update, and I am afraid a crack or two has developed. The worst of them being service issues, but I'll get to that in a second.

Dinner with 3 others, not exactly adventurous others though. I did what I could to throw some interesting dishes in the mix. If my memory serves me, we ordered: Ka Nam Jeen, Duck and pineapple curry, Fermented grilled pork, angel wings, pad thai(remember the "not adventurous part"!?)a special of grilled prawns in a garlic and ginger preparation and a fried rice of pineapple and shrimp.

Fermented pork and Ka Nam Jeen were the winners, with the Duck curry holding its own. Pork was riding that edge of fermentation where it still had a lot of its inherent porkiness but hadn't changed texture substantially. A fairly nice portion of pork loin for $12 served with a nice, mildly sweet yet abundantly spicy dipping sauce that was redolent with fried basil and ginger. It's on the menu as an entree but it seemed to work better as an app. that you share with the table.

Ka Nam Jeen was solid, yet lacked much in the way of funky seafood flavors that you would want and/or expect out of this dish. As endlessly edible as it is, it just seemed the herbs and "edge" had been knocked off it. Furthermore, with this dish and all the others, it seems that any request for "really fucking hot" goes unanswered. Disappointing.

The dishes that just didn't work, were the Fried rice and the special prawns. First the rice was cloyingly sweet, with an out of balance mixture of cane sugar and pineapple. In addition to being excessively greasy(I know its fried rice and some grease is to be expected and well, desirable. This was well past that, but to be perfectly fair, I have a slightly lower threshold for this and it may be right in your wheelhouse. Who knows.)and overly sweet, it was served with a laughably tiny wedge of lime, that fought a futile battle with the sweet aspect of the dish. A request for additional limes went unanswered(we'll get to the service issues...). The prawns could have been a great dish. They were cooked well, which I applaud, but the sauce/marinade they were served with suffered a sad situation of having garlic that was both burnt and undercooked. How? well, it seemed what caused it to me, was the highly irregular chop they put on the garlic. Some peices were 1/4 cloves and some where a super fine mince. Which led to burnt bits and raw bits. It's really amazing how something seemingly minor is so disasterous and distracting from an otherwise good dish.

Never tried the Pad Thai. That is all.

Now.....The service. First, I know that Friday at 8pm is not the time to get too picky about waits or not being pampered. Trust me, I wasn't expecting excellent(although, I think it is fair to expect quality service when a place is slammed, we will save that debate for another time because it does not enter into this equation.). I was expecting competent. We did not get either. What we got was some of the most laughably disorganized, out of time and plain messed up service I have seen in recent memory.

10 min wait after being seated to be acknowledged by our server. Ordered drinks and food at the same time at this point because it was obvious we were going to have a problem. 12 Min later we flagged someone down(not our server) to see about our drinks(2 beers, 2 ice teas)and was told "just a second". 5 min later 2 of our entrees show up, delivered by a cook. After some confusion, they were taken back. Asked again about drinks...."just a second". Then our waitress tells me she forgot to ring in the Apps. and if we still wanted them(?!?!). Flag down 3rd person to request our beverages, and she gets them in about 30 seconds. A full 20 or 25 seconds later, ALL of our food shows up.

Sure a lot of the above debacle can be put on being busy(they weren't full, maybe 80% capacity so take that FWIW.). I can deal with slow "I'm working my ass off here" service, and usually tip extra in that situation. This was clearly not that. I want to believe we just drew the short straw and got the weakest member of the serving herd, this night. I really didn't notice other tables having long waits or a myriad of mistakes, so here's to hoping it was isolated(yet still bad enough that it must be noted).

In general, The flavors of the food seemed to have slipped a half a notch or so. Perhaps that was inevitable after Dang's departure. I was thinking that something was different about the food the whole time and for a bit after dinner, then it dawned on me about the sale of the restaurant. I surely hope that we just got the bad night that is going to happen from time to time.