Tue Thai Visited 11/9/2012 3.5 Forks

Tue Thai 3 Greenwich Ave., (between 10th St & Christopher St), New York, NY 10014

I have been to tons of restaurants near Greenwich Ave such as  Rosemary's, Whitehall, and Kingswood, yet have never noticed Tue Thai.  The reason is that there are no windows to the place.  There's a glass door but then the rest of it has this wood paneling that prevents you from seeing inside the restaurant.  They could get so much more business if they installed some giant windows so that people can see inside (and vice versa).   If Allison hadn't been there before, I would have walked right past it.

We walked in at 6:30pm on a Friday and it was completely empty.  But slowly the restaurant did start to fill up as we were eating and by the time we left it was pretty packed.  The menu here is pretty standard mom and pop Thai food with pad thai, pad see ew, fried rice, curries, and sautees.  While I do love fancy, high end food, there's something really comforting about a good pad thai or fried rice dish.  Allison and I split the grilled calamari ($7), papaya salad ($7), and the shrimp pad thai ($13) and since it was a bit cold I also got a wonton soup ($5) for myself.  The grilled calamari came out first and it reminded me how much I prefer a good grilled calamari dish to a fried one that you get a lot of bars.  This one was marinated and grilled with Asian spices and served with a spicy cilantro fish sauce and a mild sirracha.  It was a pretty tasty dish and it was a great starter dish.  It really makes me never want to eat a greasy calamari dish again.  Next came mine wonton soup and this came with 3 fairly large homemade chicken and shrimp wontons in a clear broth and bok choy.  It was a a good basic clear soup but they didn't cut up the bok choy which made it difficult to eat.  It would have been better if they had made them smaller and not so bulky to chew.  Next they brought out the pad thai and papaya salad.  The pad thai was nice and saucy and had great flavor.  It really hit the spot.  Meanwhile the papaya salad was a good standard salad served with cherry tomatoes, peanuts, and string bean with a lime juice dressing.  It could have used a bit more heat to it but overall all the components were fresh and just right.

All in all, this was a good non frills Thai place in the West Village.   I don't mean to make the place sound bare bones because it's not but given it's location it's definitely not super trendy either.  But the best part of the meal was that Allison had a Groupon for the place and the total bill with tip was only $10!  I usually am not a huge fan of restaurants that participate in Groupon but I gotta say that this deal actually did what its supposed to do for a restaurant.  Meaning, it introduced me to a new restaurant that I ordinarily wouldn't go to but now that I've tried it, I would come back again.

Photo Credit: Yelp