Full disclosure is that I had take-out at Ngam and didn't sit down to eat. Even though I don't think that necessarily should create a difference in the quality of the food, I do think that it sometimes does have an effect. Although I stayed in the front of the take out area, I did notice that the decor inside was a funky open space with these cool light fixtures. It seemed like a fun place of dinner with friends or a date.
The menu had a note that it was seasonal and changed regularly which is something you don't normally see at a Thai place. Also most Thai places don't offer a delicious sounding brunch featuring farm fresh eggs from an upstate farm. So I was excited to see how unique the food could be. I ordered the Thai Sweet Corn Chowder ($7) and the Pad Kee Mao ($14) with tofu and vegetables medium spicy. Since they had an open kitchen, I watched them make my order in front of me. Now I'm not under any illusions that kitchens aren't crazy, hectic and not always glamorous. But it would be nice if the food was made with a little bit of love and care. I watched as this guy just threw a bunch of vegetables and noodles in a wok, toss is around for 5 minutes and then plopped it into a take box. It was only when I got home did I realize that there was absolutely no tofu in it and it wasn't spicy at all. It tasted more like a pad see ew instead of a pad kee mao. I did appreciate that there were a variety of vegetables that you normally don't find in pad kee mao such as Brussels sprouts and cauliflower but other than that there wasn't much else to the dish. In fact when I think about it some more, I'm not even sure there was a ton of noodles in it either. The square box that they serve the take out in was annoying and made it difficult to eat out of because the flaps kept getting in the way of eating directly from the container (yes, I realize I could have put it in a bowl but I was being that lazy at the time). It was a bit counter intuitive, but I opted to have the soup last because it looked incredibly hot and I wanted it to cool down a bit. The description of the soup made it sound wonderful and I loved all the ingredients that went into it. It was made with fresh sweet corn, coconut milk, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, Thai chili oil, galangal, Thai basil, toasted coconut. Unfortunately, the only thing I could taste was an overwhelming flavor of coconut milk. Although I love coconut, I couldn't taste anything else but creamy coconut milk and it's just not something you want to drink in a large bowl of soup. I was hoping that there would be bits of sweet corn kernels but I guess they were blended/pureed into the soup. because I didn't see any corn. But honestly, the soup was borderline inedible for me. I had to actually put it away for a while and came back to it later and sadly it didn't taste any better.
Even though I didn't love my dinner take out meal, I am super curious about the rest of the dinner menu and the brunch menu and willing to give it another try. But this time I will actually dine in and hopefully that will be a better experience. Total bill: $22 for take out
Photo Credit: Yelp
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