tofu pad thai
I don’t think we ordered enough
I don’t know how many times we have driven by Ruen Thai, located beside nearby Suseong Lake, recently. “Thai and Vietnamese Food?” We would exclaim, “I wonder if it’s any good.” Every single time. We finally decided to stop wondering and give it a try.
The best Thai food I have ever eaten was from a food cart temporarily stationed in a convenience store parking lot off the side of a dusty road in Thailand. The lady-vendor made one thing and one thing only: papaya salad. For less than a dollar we ordered some freshly made salad, packed for us to go in a plastic sandwich bag, and hurried back to our car where we greedily ate every last morsel. I cannot even begin to describe how delicious, how fresh, how subtly complex, and how flavorful that plastic bag of salad tasted.
In general I feel like the best Asian food originates from a food stand, a night market, or hunched over a low table while squatting on a plastic red stool. Ruen Thai is anything but. From the outside, the restaurant looked a bit fancy and modern, the antithesis of what I expected a legit Thai restaurant to look like. Or at least an authentic Thai restaurant.
