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Thai Food in the 801

My favorite place to get breakfast is Dees. They have a scramble/platter thing with hash browns, bacon, onions, peppers, eggs, and biscuits and gravy so piled on top of each other. It's so good.

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Authenticity is an interesting thing. The more I've thought about it over time, the less I think it exists. Even if we broke down American food, there are certainly styles of food that we could say are authentic, but there's such huge range in style within that, as well as quality, and even things that are "authentic" American food could be something that has a unique taste or presentation that you've never seen before. To demonstrate that, try to think out how often you're in search of new food only to have it taste just like something you've already had. So even within an "authenticity" range, we still expect novel tastes. And that's just within our own genre of food. We also always hear about authenticity tied to certain locales that makes things more alluring for us because the scarcity of being able to obtain that. For instance, you can't have a "true" philly cheesesteak in Utah, or eating lobster here "isn't like it is in Maine." There's a great degree of truth to a lot of this, but a lot of times we build something up that it ends up not living up to its hype.

I'm also not generally a fan of big chain restaurants like an Olive Garden or On the Border or stuff like that. But I think a lot of times we start to resent chains like that simply because they're not authentic, or they're too commercialized, that we contrast those with smaller or local establishments and we accentuate the differences to some degree of hyperbole. Not always. But ultimately it does go down to taste. Sometimes a Big Mac is just badass. I don't care if commercialization brought that to my palate. Sometimes it's just good. But we often times seek out authentic, not as a means to an ends, but as the ends itself. What makes authentic Mexican food, anyway? There's not "one thing" that's authentic. And then there are different regions. How would one even answer the question of what's authentic American? There's no one place you could go that would perfectly encapsulate it, and even of the places that we thing would give a good sampling of it, those are also the exceptions as they're not necessarily every-day things.

A lot of places can do good wings. But sometimes Buffalo Wild Wings is just the best.
 
infection said:
Authenticity is an interesting thing. The more I've thought about it over time, the less I think it exists. Even if we broke down American food, there are certainly styles of food that we could say are authentic, but there's such huge range in style within that, as well as quality, and even things that are "authentic" American food could be something that has a unique taste or presentation that you've never seen before. To demonstrate that, try to think out how often you're in search of new food only to have it taste just like something you've already had. So even within an "authenticity" range, we still expect novel tastes. And that's just within our own genre of food. We also always hear about authenticity tied to certain locales that makes things more alluring for us because the scarcity of being able to obtain that. For instance, you can't have a "true" philly cheesesteak in Utah, or eating lobster here "isn't like it is in Maine." There's a great degree of truth to a lot of this, but a lot of times we build something up that it ends up not living up to its hype.

I'm also not generally a fan of big chain restaurants like an Olive Garden or On the Border or stuff like that. But I think a lot of times we start to resent chains like that simply because they're not authentic, or they're too commercialized, that we contrast those with smaller or local establishments and we accentuate the differences to some degree of hyperbole. Not always. But ultimately it does go down to taste. Sometimes a Big Mac is just badass. I don't care if commercialization brought that to my palate. Sometimes it's just good. But we often times seek out authentic, not as a means to an ends, but as the ends itself. What makes authentic Mexican food, anyway? There's not "one thing" that's authentic. And then there are different regions. How would one even answer the question of what's authentic American? There's no one place you could go that would perfectly encapsulate it, and even of the places that we thing would give a good sampling of it, those are also the exceptions as they're not necessarily every-day things.

A lot of places can do good wings. But sometimes Buffalo Wild Wings is just the best.
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I like wing nutz the best for wings. And wingers is the worst.

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fishonjazz said:
I like wing nutz the best for wings. And wingers is the worst.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using JazzFanz mobile app
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Wingers sucks. The best wing place I had was in Temple, Texas, called Pizza Wings & Things. Absolutely great wings. Completely terrible service. They're in the path of totality for the solar eclipse in 2024, or whenever it is. We're going to make a trip back out there for it and that's one of many places we're going to hit up. Well, that may be further down the list as my wife didn't like it. Aside from the wings it's just okay.

In general, though, I find most places wings to be too vinegary. BWW seems to have a good balance. Wingers is too sweet. And too suck.
 
infection said:
Wingers sucks. The best wing place I had was in Temple, Texas, called Pizza Wings & Things. Absolutely great wings. Completely terrible service. They're in the path of totality for the solar eclipse in 2024, or whenever it is. We're going to make a trip back out there for it and that's one of many places we're going to hit up. Well, that may be further down the list as my wife didn't like it. Aside from the wings it's just okay.

In general, though, I find most places wings to be too vinegary. BWW seems to have a good balance. Wingers is too sweet. And too suck.
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Man, when I was in college, there was this little hole in the wall bar called Al’s Airport Inn in Ewing, NJ that on Monday nights would get packed for Monday Night Football because they had $1 wings...and you’d get a dozen of them. Or maybe it was ten, I forget. But it was so great. Though you’d wait for like an hour for them but still.
 
There's a new guy who worked on my shift over the last week and a half. He's an Irish guy but has lived in Utah for about 10 years now and he's married to a Lao woman. So I asked him if there were any places that had good Lao food and he said New Thai Cafe. He said the owners are actually from Laos and to just ask them if they can make the dish Lao style.

So last night I got takeout from NTC, which is already one of my favorite places. I got the Larb Lao style max spice level. It was definitely different, and good. Where Larb typically has a very bright clean pop this tasted a little "dirty" (not in a bad way) where there was a sort of slight dank fishiness (again, for me that was not a bad thing).
 
Gameface said:
There's a new guy who worked on my shift over the last week and a half. He's an Irish guy but has lived in Utah for about 10 years now and he's married to a Lao woman. So I asked him if there were any places that had good Lao food and he said New Thai Cafe. He said the owners are actually from Laos and to just ask them if they can make the dish Lao style.

So last night I got takeout from NTC, which is already one of my favorite places. I got the Larb Lao style max spice level. It was definitely different, and good. Where Larb typically has a very bright clean pop this tasted a little "dirty" (not in a bad way) where there was a sort of slight dank fishiness (again, for me that was not a bad thing).
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"Tastes dirty with a slight, dank fishiness". That there is a appetizing description.
 
Scat said:
"Tastes dirty with a slight, dank fishiness". That there is a appetizing description.
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You changed what I said...

Anyway, Lao cooking uses fermented fish paste. I'd call the flavor of fermented fish paste "a sort of slight dank fishiness."
 
Gameface said:
I generally have an issue with the term "authentic" when it comes to food. In Thailand there are almost certainly thousands of takes on what Drunken Noodles are, if that is even a traditional Thai dish and not just an exported recipe developed for the taste buds of people outside Thailand.

Any traditional dish is made countless ways. There is really no such thing as "authentic" in my opinion. The best that can be done is to make something that tastes good and is desirable by enough of the people in the location it is made to make it reasonable to put it on a menu.

Wanting something "here" to taste like it came from "there" is not unreasonable, but it's also frequently unobtainable. The local supply chain, local ingredients, etc, are all going to have an impact, but the biggest impact will always be commercial viability. What will people "here" eat, what will they pay for? You can't force food on customers and just yell at them about authenticity. You have to offer things they want to eat.

I don't really care if the Thai food I eat in SLC is the same as the Thai food in Thailand (or Portland). What I care about is if the food I'm eating tastes good to me. I can certainly try to better understand Thai cuisine and get closer to what people in Thailand enjoy. If that is my goal I'm far more likely to find success making that food myself, in my kitchen, sourcing ingredients diligently according to the standard I'm attempting to achieve. Short of that, **** holding a commercial restaurant to a standard that would bankrupt them.
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Hi Gameface,

First of all, this is a great post. On the point of your last paragraph. It's a common theme for local ethnic places(especially Asian) to lean conservative with their choice of offerings. While this, to some degree, seemingly guarantees modest success, I think it's unfortunate that most of the Thai, Viatnamese, Korean and Chinese places start to feel samey. They are conservative for a reason. Most of these restaurant owners need to succeed because they can't afford to fail. In fact, most of the restaurant owners I know that are Korean people don't own Korean restaurants. They all started Sushi places because Sushi appears to be a safe bet. White people love Sushi right?

This thread is a good example. There really isn't much to set this Thai place apart from the others.

The thing is, I'm of the opinion that branching out a little bit into more specialized and unique fare would, if done well, ensure success. I know for a fact that Utahns are itching for more options. I have people I barely know at work come up to me and ask if there are any new Korean places to hit up. We just need some competent thrill-seekers to open these places up and they'd have too many customers to handle.

When people feel confident that the market will support it. You'll start to see what we see in places like LA, NY. Instead ofa bunch of "Korean Restaurants" where they offer a 6 page menu of the same stuff you can get from the other "Korean Restaurant", places that specialize in specific parts of Korean cuisine will be available. like a place that does Dakgalbi, a Gomtang Jib, or a 24 hour gamjatang hangover specialist(this one is a long shot).

The good news is that there are some success stories here already. Mr. Shabu is big in the gateway (shabu is originally Japanese but huge in Korea too and Mr. shabu is owned by a Korean dude (he's kind of weird so I don't talk to him very much but his restaurant is gucci)) there are now multiple Kbbq places, none of which are very good yet but they're popular, there are two successful Korean Fried Chicken (the real KFC) in the valley now, and of course Hong Kong Banjum is a large step off the main path as it only offers Korean-Chinese food (very good too).

Hopefully, once it is clear that this kind of specialization of cuisine is welcome here in SLC, more and better things start to follow. Everyone do your part lmao.

On the authenticity portion of your post, I fully agree. Authenticity is whatever you can do with the original ingredients to make the "authentic" dish. I mean if you're using sriracha in place of gochujang nothing is going to be authentic. but if you're using gochujang in a Korean dish I think it's going to end up "authentic" enough. All of the Korean places in the valley make clearly authentic Korean food, It's just not as good as what you can get there.
 
leftyjace said:
Jazzfanz can a thread about Thai food turn into an epic debate.

I feel you about authentic foods. When I went to China I discovered that those Chinese people can’t make Chinese food worth crap!
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Different strokes for different folks. I'd say Chinese Cuisine is one of the most altered of foreign cuisine. American Chinese is basically its own cuisine.
 
Wes Mantooth said:
Man, when I was in college, there was this little hole in the wall bar called Al’s Airport Inn in Ewing, NJ that on Monday nights would get packed for Monday Night Football because they had $1 wings...and you’d get a dozen of them. Or maybe it was ten, I forget. But it was so great. Though you’d wait for like an hour for them but still.
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There was a place in Reno like this, hole in the wall bar with about 8 actual like diner-style tables. Kid-friendly for the most part. On Mondays they had $5 gourmet burgers, fries included, and their burgers were easily $10 burgers on the low end, and I would have happily paid $15 for the plate. And on Tuesdays they had a dozen wings for $2.50. And their wings are easily the best bar/restaurant wings I have had. Crispy without being battered (I hate battered wings), even in the sauce, and the sauce was the perfect tangy/spicy/garlicky combo. And great house-made blue cheese dressing with big chunks of blue cheese. Oh man I want some now.

We ate there a lot.

A. Lot.
 
What's with Wingers hate? Lmao that **** is candy and they give you ****ing popcorn. What's the problem?
 
LogGrad98 said:
There was a place in Reno like this, hole in the wall bar with about 8 actual like diner-style tables. Kid-friendly for the most part. On Mondays they had $5 gourmet burgers, fries included, and their burgers were easily $10 burgers on the low end, and I would have happily paid $15 for the plate. And on Tuesdays they had a dozen wings for $2.50. And their wings are easily the best bar/restaurant wings I have had. Crispy without being battered (I hate battered wings), even in the sauce, and the sauce was the perfect tangy/spicy/garlicky combo. And great house-made blue cheese dressing with big chunks of blue cheese. Oh man I want some now.

We ate there a lot.

A. Lot.
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Ugh. I had vegan wings on Sunday.
 
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