My wife and I just tried Thai Spice for lunch today. Thai Spice is at the SE corner of Palmer and Mopac, in north west Austin, not far from IBM and Austin Diagnostic. We were very impressed. The food was among the best of the Austin Thai restaurants and it is unusually vegetarian friendly. The vegetarian buffet items I remember are... Appetizers: - Vegetable soup: fairly bland, next time I would add some of the Thai spices - A standard eggroll - less greasy and better than average - A cheese filled eggroll - interesting. I noted that the dinner menu listed this as including crab, but I am assuming they use a different recipe for lunch, since the waitress assured me it was vegetarian, and I detected no note of crab. - A non-fried eggroll, not as quite as good as some I have had, but the only place I know where these are available on a buffet. - Sweet fried noodles, interesting, and good in moderation. Main courses: - Pad Thai - suffered slightly from the warming tray, but still good - Fried rice - above average - Plain white rice - what can you say? - Green curry - tofu and vegetable based, well flavored, my favorite item at the buffet - Red curry - also tofu and vegetable based, not as well flavored as the green, but still good. - Ginger fried tofu - less interesting than the curries - A generic "Buddha's Delight" type dish, which I didn't try Desserts: - A black sticky rice, quite good once you get used to the consistency. Reminiscent of the black rice pudding at Satay but more gelatinous. - Tapioca, definitely not your mother's tapioca - An unidentified, but quite interesting dessert. Salad bar: Fairly standard with an interesting Thai peanut dressing and most of the other usual suspects. The total cost was $15.00 for the two of us, including tax but not tip or drinks. We are definitely going back. Others have noted that the food could stand more spices. I agree, but there are many Thai spices available on the buffet line to add to the fire level. If you are a vegetarian living or working in north west Austin, this is a must visit restaurant. Note for the non-vegetarians: There were also three meat dishes on the buffet line, including something called Thai Jerky, which, to a vegetarian, looked quite scary. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- Roger Sessions ([email removed]) Author of "COM and DCOM; Microsoft's Vision for Distributed Objects" 512/258-4922 http://www.objectwatch.com Publisher of the ObjectWatch Newsletter Old issues at http://www.objectwatch.com/past.htm
Austin, TX
Thai Spice - A Vegetarian Perspective
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 23:11:05 CDT Xref: austin.food:2525 Roger S. wrote: > We were very impressed. The food was among the best of the Austin Thai > restaurants and it is unusually vegetarian friendly. The vegetarian buffet > items I remember are... ... he lists lots of vegetarian dishes... > Note for the non-vegetarians: There were also three meat dishes on the > buffet line, including something called Thai Jerky, which, to a vegetarian, > looked quite scary. Yep, that's the problem all right. Maybe 30 items on the buffet, including 8 or 10 entrees, and only three meat dishes. They were bland, not especially tasty, and the meat was mighty sparse and what there was was of fairly poor quality. For a carnivore like me, I thought seven bucks was a big ripoff. My advice for meat eaters is to hit the best Thai lunch buffet in town at Classic Thai. And avoid the worst: Bangkok Cuisine. Steve