New York City has hundreds of Thai restaurants. I'm going to try them all--using sheer will power and an addiction to curry. Follow my quest here!

Friday, September 24, 2010

LUNCH SPECIAL SHOWDOWN - Reviews #3 & #4: Tai Thai (E Village) and Pukk (E Village)

As many of you know, one of my several jobs is working as a nanny for a family in the East Village. Their daughter, whom I adore, is only 8.5 months old--meaning that a lot of our outside-the-house time together involves wandering around the neighborhood, looking at boutiques full of clothes I could never afford, and getting Thai takeout for me to eat while she takes her afternoon nap. Glamorous, I know.

Now, there are quite a few Thai places within a ten-minute walk of this baby's house. And although my frugal side often tries to remind me in the morning before I walk out the door that the cost of eating out is approximately four times the cost of bringing a can of soup and an apple to work, the Thai-obsessed part of me usually wins by reasoning, "yeah, but if you get a lunch special....it's only TWICE as expensive!"

So here we are with two places from which I got a lunch special in the past two weeks.

First up: Tai Thai (yes, another place named Tai Thai) at 78 E. 1st Street

Tai Thai offers five entree options for their lunch special, all of which can be made with chicken OR tofu + veggies (score!). The choices are: Pad Thai, Thai Fried Rice, Red Curry, Green Curry, or Massaman Curry. As you can see, one of my go-tos (Pad See Ew) is not a choice, but my recent conversion into a red curry fan means that that's what I get. The special also comes with rice (yes, in NYC that's considered an extra item) and a "side salad" which is basically iceberg lettuce drenched in peanut dressing with two tofu chunks thrown in for good measure. You get all these things for $5.95! I really enjoy the red curry and consider it alone worth that price--a GREAT combo of veggies (I usually ask for mine without mushrooms and then I love every single veggie in there!) and the spiciness just inches up next to my upper limit. That means that with a box of tissues, I'm good to go!

Tai Thai rating: 7.5
Price: Reasonable
Service: Fast (takeout)
Food: Extremely tasty
Portions: Average
Ambiance: N/A (takeout)*

*although I will say that I have eaten sit-down here once, all alone, and it was delightful. Dark wood kind of interior strung with colorful lights and decorated with some obscure thai movie posters.

Next up: Pukk Vegetarian Thai Cuisine at 71 First Avenue.

First of all, this is an entirely vegetarian place and that. is. awesome. In NYC it's not all that unusual, but as a vegetarian it sometimes gets old seeing how many options there are at most places for omnivores when your options are mostly salads, a plate of four side vegetables, or pre-dinner bread (think: Outback Steakhouse). Pukk also has a really long list of entree options for their lunch special--13, actually--and most of those use soy meat (esp. fake duck) instead of the standard tofu. I myself am a tofu nut, especially since I have yet to learn how to cook it well; I also never really liked duck in the first place, so why would I want imitation? It just doesn't appeal to me. They do offer a Pad See Ew (with fake duck) but since I was planning on comparing Pukk to Tai Thai, I ordered the red curry. One thing that jazzed me up about Pukk is that their lunch special, priced at $6, comes with not only a soup (and rice), but also your choice of one of six appetizer. I went with the spring rolls.

Unfortunately, all this buildup about Pukk made it almost impossible for them to meet my expectations. Yes, there was soup and an appetizer, but both were tiny portions. There was much less rice than I had expected (although I did get to have brown rice) and by the time we made it back home, the curry itself has separated a bit and created a nasty grease-layer on top. When I stirred it around, I discovered that, sadly, their "Panang Curry Tofu" actually had no tofu in it! WTF people? This meant that I had an average-sized plate of curry sauce with some veggies sprinkled in there, plus a teeny container of rice. Also--to add insult to injury--the curry was wayyyy too hot for me. And if wanting tofu w my veggies and being a spiciness wuss makes me wrong, well...i don't want to be right.

Pukk rating: 4.5
Price: Reasonable
Service: Fast (takeout)
Food: Slightly below average
Portions: Slightly below average (rice-extremely below average)
Ambiance: N/A (takeout)

So there you have it! Tai Thai wins by a landslide. I will probably end up giving Pukk another chance in the future and maybe order something different--but in the meantime there's Mini Thai Cafe, Cafetasia, Holy Basil, Klong, Tara Thai, Thai on Clinton, and more! PHEW!