(no subject)

[desoto_hia873]

I had to get some money out of the bank today, so I went to the mall across the street at lunch. They have a small food court there with the usual greasy lunch suspects. But there was a new addition today: a placed call Simply Thai.

Peterborough is not exactly the most cosmopolitan of cities (that's putting it mildly). There's one "Thai" restaurant in town, but the food they serve isn't really Thai food. It tastes good, but it's just not Thai. The first time I went there, I asked if they had lemongrass tea. The blank look on the waitress's face, followed by her "What kind of tea?" told me pretty much all I needed to know.

Not expecting much (and having previously decided to get a Bento Box from the Japanese restaurant down the street), I went over to look at Simply Thai's menu. I could smell the fish sauce as I approached the counter, and several of their menu items had lemongrass in the name. So I abandoned my Bento Box aspirations and decided to try a bowl of their Tom Yam Kai, mediumly spicy, with shrimp. And it's... not bad. A wee bit salty and rather heavy on the rice noodles (which I don't use at all when I make it), but it's quite definitely Thai soup. I am most pleased.

I've found two Asian food stores in Peterborough, but neither one sells fresh lemongrass. So I asked the cashier where they got theirs as he was ringing up my order. "Toronto," he replied. I was unsurprised. And then he asked, "Do you want some?" I may have gaped at him briefly, but recovered and said, "Sure!" And off he went and returned with a little bag of fresh-frozen lemongrass. For free.

Mmmm, lemongrass. I may have just about enough to make a cup of lemongrass tea tonight.

They will definitely be getting more of my lunch business.

Also, a third Japanese restaurant recently opened in Peterborough (it's not as good as the other two, but Jim was pleased to discover that they have a dish with Chinese eggplants), and we have one quite respectable Vietnamese restaurant on the west side of town. Those are my three favorite cuisines (I think I was born on the wrong continent), so things are looking up gastronomically around here.

~*~
I've spent the last three days at a work-related conference in Orillia and arrived home late yesterday afternoon in a condition bordering on a state of collapse. I was so tired that I was actually shaking. I have something like 200 unread emails and haven't been on LJ since Monday. I'll try to catch up over the weekend (when I'm not in the office working overtime--we have a deadline on Monday ::sigh::), but do let me know if I've missed something significant.

Comments

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

HEE!

My favorite teriyaki place is run by Koreans, and they'll give you fresh home-made hot pepper paste for free with any order. MILES better than anything in the stores.

I envy you your lemon grass, though!

Julia, I can buy it fresh in my usual grocery but it costs the earth

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

Ottawa has a "Chinatown," but it really became "Vietnamtown" years ago. Ottawa families sponsored a lot of displaced Vietnamese families in the 1980s, and they pretty much took over Chinatown and made it their own. I *LOVE* Vietnamese food--that was probably the hardest thing to leave behind when I moved to Peterborough. Quite a few mainstream grocery stores in Ottawa carry lemongrass, and you can certainly find it in every Asian grocery store there too.

Yum.

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

There were a whole lot of Vietnamese who came to Olympia and Lacey after 1975- one of them Mui Huynh, started a restaurant called Saigon Rendezvous in the early 1980s, and the first time I had Pho, I fell for the whole concept. Lacey has Korean Barbecue and both Muslim and Buddhist Thai restaurants, and a bunch of Asian groceries and a Halal Grocery and Butcher Shop... very strange, for me, who grew up on Chinese American food of the old sort, from two Chinese Restaurants that had been here since the 1890s.

Michael Pollan's new book says not to eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize; I figure I'll go by Mui's great grandmother, because mine put cooked pork-chops down in lard and made pickeled everything.

Julia, my maternal grandmother, on the other hand, loved egg-drop soup

[yourlibrarian]

Giving you the lemongrass was a nice surprise! We actually have a good number of ethnic restaurants in town given how small we are, but sadly both they and the more mainstream restaurants really aren't that great.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

The lemongrass was a very nice surprise! I doubt that he gave it to me with any ulterior motives, but he guaranteed that I'd be a repeat customer with that gesture.

Peterborough's Japanese restaurants are surprisingly good (although I'm surprised that a city so small could support two of them, never mind three), but it is sadly lacking in many other ethnic places.