 Thai Spice
Leave it to me to arrive in one of the most celebrated gourmet dining cities in the country and immediately land at thoroughly mediocre Thai place. My stay in southern California gave me the opportunity to consume more burritos than you could shake a stick at (through really, you should stop shaking that stick at my burritos and aim for the piñata. Yes I know you're blindfolded, but still, pay attention, dipshit). Every place I went, it was burritos, burritos, burritos. So after a couple days on the Pacific Coast Highway, I was looking forward to a nice mellow dinner in San Francisco, some good hot Thai food before hitting the town. Unfortunately, the parking situation in San Fran is hideous, so I just parked the car where I could and decided to eat at the first decent-looking Thai place I found. Thai Spice fit the bill.
Nothing wrong with it, really. The atmosphere was calm and the place was pretty clean. But I began to see why most people just don't like Thai food that much—it's that there are so many Thai restaurants, and so few of them are very good. Middling Thai food is as unimpressive as food gets outside of the hospital circuit, and Thai Spice was middling at best. It wasn't gross by any means, but it was nothing to write home about. Nonetheless, I immediately wrote my mother to complain about the whole situation. I devoted sixteen pages to the subject, but I'll spare you the whole of it (you can wait for my personal papers to be published in a complete edition after my death … look for this letter in Volume Nineteen: The Complete Vacation Correspondence and Postcards of Monger C. Jurisprudence, Part Three).
I had Rad Na with tofu and a Sprite. The meal was liquidy and basically taste-free, but sustaining nonetheless. The service was good, though I wish I had brought something to read while I waited. What a boring meal that was. The bill came to $6.25 ($8.05 with tip), and I charged it. I can't say I'd want to eat here again, but I'm glad to have gone to further my quest to review all the Thai restaurants in the hemisphere. I should add that I'm puzzled by the take-home menu quote that lists Thai Spice as "One of the Top 15% Restaurants in the USA." That seems like a rather specious claim, don't you think? That would be like calling me "One of the Top 15% Writers in the Galaxy," except in my case at least it would be true. Quit snickering … Nabokov's dead, and you're stuck with me!
Review by Monger C. Jurisprudence, September 1999 |