I have passed by Qi a million times but have never eaten there. It's centrally located right in Union Square and from the outside it's got this funky clubby vibe to it. So you might think it's one of those over-priced, too cool for school Asian places, but behind the facade the food is really more of your basic, standard Americanized Thai place. The huge menu has your spring rolls, dumplings, pad thai, fried rice, curries, sauteed entries, and strangely enough Indochine sandwiches (I have no idea what those really are). I had dinner with Mabel, another Asian friend of mine, and you'd think between the two of us, we would be ordering the more "adventurous" foods. But no, we both had major cravings for your standard pad thai and fried rice. How lame are we? :)
So we split the green papaya salad ($5.50), the chicken pad thai ($9) and shrimp Asian fried rice ($9). Yes, those prices are accurate. It's that kind of Thai place where everything is pretty much under $15. The most expensive item on the menu was the sea bass that was $18. It's also the kind of place where the food comes out in under 10 minutes. Before Mabel and I could even catch up on what we did this week, all our dishes came out. While I do like getting my food in a reasonable amount of time, sometimes getting it this quickly can be a bit frightening. Another thing to note was that the portions were huge. I was glad that I was splitting everything with Mabel, otherwise I would have been eating a giant vat of pad thai for hours. The pad thai was your good basic noodle dish. It really hit the spot because I had been craving pad thai for a while. The noodles were sauced well (not too dry, not too sauce-y) and there was plenty of chicken in there to make it a very hearty dish. The fried rice was also your basic fried rice with egg, scallion, tomatoes, and carrots. The shrimp was surprisingly plumb and actually tasted like they might be fresh. I just wish that it was like the fried rices I got in Thailand where it had a fried egg on top. I much prefer those kinds of fried rice dishes with the runny yolk on top but those are hard to find in the city. It's not that hard to do but I've only seen it in the more authentic Thai places. The green papaya salad was like most other green papaya salads I've had with nice crunch and tang to it. It wasn't super spicy like some salads I've gotten before but it did have a mild bit of heat to it. My one complaint about it would be that they put it on a huge bed of lettuce and I would have liked it if the entire bowl was filled with the salad instead of the filler. But for $5.50 I can't really complaint too much.
The service here was fast and furious. Before we knew it we had our check in front of us. We may have ordered, gotten our food, eaten and paid in under an hour. Crazy. But the meal was totally what Mabel and I were in the mood for and definitely filled our craving. I give it 3.5 forks not because the food was so amazing and high quality, but more because the prices were incredibly reasonable, the food is pretty good considering how scary fast it comes out, and the location is perfect. Plus the decor is trendy enough that when you're eating there, you actually kind of feel like you're eating somewhere fun as opposed to some of the more standard/drab mom and pop places. Total bill: $17/pp.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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