The place is covered in magazine and newspaper articles mentioning their greatness (from LA Times, Food Network: Best Thing I Ever Ate, Rachel Ray Magazine, Travel and Leisure, Time Out, etc), so you almost had to expect amazing food. I loved the fact that they have a sign that says "please be patient if your food takes a long time, but it will be worth it." The menu there is beyond anything I have ever seen before in my life. The front half of the menu has your more typical thai dishes: curries, pad thais, rice dishes, etc. But the back half of the menu is the "special" authentic southern style food and there must be about 50+ choices. Luckily, at the table there is a list of the "best dishes" and we basically ordered off of that. We had the fried morning glory with shrimp, the steam New Zealand mussels, crying tiger with beef, spring rolls, spicy chicken in a curry dry rub, and spicy brown rice with chicken. It took all my will power not to order a pad thai or crab fried rice. As mentioned by other Yelpers, the service is not great. We basically had to flag down our waitress after sitting for 10-15 minutes to order our food.
The morning glory was a common veggie I saw while I was in Thailand and Cambodia and it was deep fried and tossed with fresh shrimp and red onion. It was pretty good but I thought that best part was the shrimp and not the morning glory. The spring rolls were your typical spring rolls and not much to write home about. The crying tiger dish came out next and was very tender but not as spicy as I thought. But apparently the dipping sauce was the killer, so I was glad that I didn't get into it. The absolute best dish of the night was the steamed mussels. Seriously Freakin AMAZING. The mussels were ginormous and incredibly plump...they were almost the size of my fist. I wanted to eat the entire meal and not share it with Erik. Meanwhile the broth was doused in red chilis but enough that the burn didn't kill your tastebuds. The one dish that was kind of a disappointment was the chicken rubbed in curry powder...it had a very distinct fishy taste to it, which was a bit off putting. We were all pretty excited about it since it was from the "authentic" side of the menu but it was our least favorite. I was so full from trying the first few dishes that I never got around to trying the fried rice dish. Boo. This is totally the type of place to go with a large group of people and order tons of different dishes. We tried to do that, but it's hard with only 3 people and 1 who doesn't really eat seafood. I don't know how much the total bill was since Vivi and Erik paid but I suspect it was probably around $100. By the time we left around 7ish, the place was totally packed, so get there early unless you want to wait outside for a while.
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