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!

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Review #5: Qi (Flatiron/Union Sq area, Manhattan)

Last week, T and I were craving some date-ish time and although he only had about an hour between jobs on this particular night, I knew that I'd be able to meet up with him--and if we had a place in mind, we could fit in a real sit-down dinner. Well, as happens to most plans set in NYC, things went a bit awry but in the end we did get to try Qi (31 W 14th St b/t Fifth Ave and Ave of the Americas) and I'm really glad we did.

Both coming off sort of "meh" shifts at work, then getting our signals crossed about where to meet, then walking the wrong way for a little while, brought us to the doors of Qi hungry, cranky, and in a rush. As countless yelp users have noted, the decor inside was amazing (ships in the air! wall-to-ceiling abacus art!) and at first we doubted that they would even do takeout. Fortunately, they did, and the host was really nice even though I suspect I had "I'm GROUCHY!!!" written all over my face. We glanced at the menu at lightening speed, picked the Pad See Ew and the Red Curry (both my faves, yes, we share everything, I know, it's sickening) and sat down on a weird plastic "couch" to wait. Less than 5 minutes later, we had our food and were trucking it over to Union Square to sit on the steps and have an al fresco "picnic" dinner.

The Pad See Ew was a little greasier than I like it, but otherwise it tasted great and had a nice amount of tofu and Chinese broccoli (only two pieces of American broccoli though. wtf?). My one wish for Pad See Ew is that it will have other veggies too, but often that's not the case (it was not the case for Qi). The Red Curry, however, was fantastic! Nice and creamy but also spicy. Heavy on the tofu, green beans and broccoli; light on the green peppers. Just how I like it! There was still the seemingly-perpetual problem of not enough rice, but we just took the leftover sauce/veggies home, added some of our own veggies (MORE BROCCOLI NOM NOM NOM), made more rice, and got a second meal out of it! Score!

Qi rating: 8
Price: Reasonable/Low for dinner
Service: Pretty Fast
Food: Mostly good
Portions: Average to large
Ambiance: Beautiful (but ultimately N/A since we did takeout.