Khow Thai

Khow Thai
1600 Broadway Street
Boulder.
 
Andrew gives Khow Thai 3 chews out of 5.

This place was a good joint to get a quick Thai fix. This is the only Thai restaurant I have been to in Boulder. I had a great meal here, but this was before I knew the extremely bold statement by Boulder Weekly to determine Khow Thai's food as the best Thai food in the county. Having said that, I am really curious to see the quality of other local Thai food. Let me tell you why I think Boulder Weekly's statement lessens the meaning of the word "best."

We got one of those complimentary soups before we ordered. If this soup reflected the restaurant as a whole, I would have stood up and left. Sweet and Sour Soup, as they call it, consists of a mucous textured sweet and sour broth, with a few chunks of tofu, and some strings of, well...I'm not really sure. First off, the tofu was overcooked, hard and dry. The overall taste of the soup was a very bland sweet and sour taste with reminiscent aftertastes of SpaghettiO's. i decided to stay because I was hungry and it is ridiculous to leave a restaurant only judging it by a free soup; after all, it was free. I ordered two of my favorite Thai dishes here: the Beef Salad and Chicken Satey. Good news first. The Chicken Satey was really good. The chicken was perfectly tender and the peanut sauce was the perfectly thick. Now the bad news. The Beef Salad looked like a colorful mix of mint, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and of course beef. It had that spicy, limey smell that it is usually associated with, so I though, "great." I took a few bites and it tasted pretty good, like my favorite Thai salad should. A few bites into the salad, when I started getting more pieces of meat, I noticed that the meat actually tasted like Philly Cheesesteak. Don't get me wrong, I love a good Cheesesteak, but I don't like Philly Cheesesteak flavored meat in my Thai Beef Salad. Just to make sure it wasn't my poor judgement, I consulted my dinner partner, Matthew McGuire, and he agreed that the beef in his dish tasted like a Philly Cheesesteak. So my conclusion on the salad ingredients is the follwing: salad and dressing, yes; beef, no. My conclusion on the salad as a whole: good/interesting, yes; Thai, almost.

I got up in the middle of the meal to use the restroom, and was alarmed when I tried to exit, but couldn't. I thought I had locked myself in the restroom. I twisted the handle and pushed and pulled, but nothing! I felt like an idiot. When I finally managed to returned to the table I told Matthew about my incident. Again he confirmed that I was not in the wrong when later in the meal he almost got locked in the bathroom, too.

Overall, the restaurant had a great environment. The wait staff was great and really nice. My jacket fell off the back of my chair, and a member of the wait staff was nice enough to pick it up off the floor and put it back on my chair. What a sweetheart! On the whole, very helpful people and great service.

I looked into the kitchen to see if the chefs were as great as the waitresses. I only saw Latinos and white people. I'm not implying that Latinos and white people are notorious for making red meat taste like Philly Cheesesteak, but I'm saying that the first thought that went through my head was, "maybe the meat was wronged by the chefs not being Thai."

All in all, aside from the inedible free soup, imprisoning restrooms, the Philly Cheesesteak flavored red meat, I enjoyed my meal; however, I would never categorize this restaurant as "best," even without having dined at other Thai places in the area. So to Khow Thai I say, "good job," with a pat on the back. And to Boulder Weekly I say, "assholes."