Ah, SEA. What can I say? The location in the East Village (now closed) was one of the first restaurants I had ever been to when I first moved to NYC, so I will always have a soft spot for it. It really kicked off the concept of good cheap thai food in my book.I have been to this location of SEA only a few times b/c it is just such a scene. It huge, loud and way too "hip". It only got worse after Sex and the City filmed there. But I will admit that it does have that "wow" factor when you walk in with the buddha and lotus and water. I have avoided this place for the past few years only b/c I can't deal with the crowds, and there are just as good thai places nearby. But when Dan mentioned it last night, I thought, what the hell? Let's give it another try.
We get there around 6:45pm on a Sunday and it was packed! I was so shocked that after all these years it's still so crowded, but luckily we were able to snag a table right away. We ordered the Emerald Vegetable dumplings to start and then Dan and I decided that we were going to order out of our comfort zone of pad thai and pad woon sen. I get the Seafood Rice Pot ($14), which had squid, shrimp, white fish fillet, and vegetables in a brown gravy sauce on a bed of rice. Dan got almost the same thing but with a spicy sauce. The thing about places like this is that the food comes out super quickly. The dumplings came out 5-7 mins after we ordered. To be honest, the dumplings were not good at all. They were very doughy and had no taste to it. Luckily, the main dish was a bit better. First of all, the portions there are huge...almost unfit for 1 meal. There was a lot of seafood on my dish which was great...but a bit too much squid, which is what Dan said about his meal too. I had envisioned my meal coming in a hot clay pot but instead it was served in this weird mini wok on top of a plate, but there was food spilling out of the mini wok in to the plate, so it was a bit hard to get everything in one place. I thought it was pretty decent and I was happy that it wasn't just a lot of rice with a little bit of seafood, it was quite the opposite.
Unlike Le Barricou, the waiter, while super nice, wasn't too attentive and they never re-filled my water, which is kind of key when you are eating food with MSG in it. While I will continue to stay away from this place during peak hours, I would come back every now and then just to make myself feel hip again. Total bill with tax, tip and drinks $53.
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