Spice Island Tea House review

 Just went to S.I.T.H. for the second time.  Was underwhelmed the first
 time.  Food was good but not what I expected from all the raves.

 This time I decided to live dangerously and try the gado gado (for some
 reason they spell it gadol-gadol).  It consisted of mostly bean sprouts
 and lettuce with a few green beans and snow peas.  (It normally contains
 broccoli and cauliflower but I asked them to leave them out and substi-
 tute more of the other vegetables.  Basically they just increased the
 bean sprouts - as far as I could tell.  And of all the versions of
 gado gado I have had or seen recipes for I have never seen any with
 broccoli or cauliflower in them!)  The salad was garnished with a
 few *meager* slices of hard boiled egg, cucumber, and tomato.  Now in
 my version and in most of the versions I have run across those three
 items are major components of the salad and not merely garnishes.
 I was quite disappointed that there were no potatoes in it also.  They
 are another of my favorite ingredients in gado gado.  The sauce was
 not very good - very sour tasting (too much tamarind or lemon in my
 opinion) and not peanutty enough.  Also, it wasn't even the slightest
 bit hot - no chilis in it, apparently.  And it was very runny.  It
 should be fairly thick.  It was also garnished with fried onions but
 there were only about 4 or 5 miniscule bits of onion - not even
 enough to taste.  Very disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.

 I also had the Burmese BBQ chicken.  The flavor was good.  But I
 was very disappointed in the quantities of the accompaniments.  There
 was a very sparse salad of mostly finely shredded cabbage with a hot,
 sweet, tart sauce.  The flavor was very good but it was a mere taste.
 There was a portion of rice which was substantial enough but, again,
 was garnished with those fried onions in miniscule amounts.  The
 menu also promised naan but what arrived was a tine wedge of what
 I imagine was supposed to be naan, but, in fact, tasted more like
 pita bread to me.  (My friend's dinner was supposed to come with
 chapati and she also receive a tiny wedge of bread instead of a
 whole chapati.

 I don't think this place is all that cheap considering the portions.
 In other restaurants you might pay $1 or so more for an entree item
 but if you order 2 items you would have enough for another meal the
 next day.  All I took home was about 1/2 of my salad.

 I also tried the coconut cake for dessert.  It is made with farina
 and has a dense gritty texture.  It was pretty good but I think
 they could have left the raisins out.  I didn't think they "went"
 with the coconut flavor.

 Kate