INdulgent Nonweekend special --Siam Square

INdulgent Nonweekend special --Siam Square 

One of my best friend in collage came to Indy to visit me earlier this week. Happiest day recently! We were all born in Beijing. 

She is now studying in the University of Rochester and she showed so much jealous for "City-feeling" here. It was funny that when we compared several cities, Indy actually did a pretty good job in nearly every way. At least very balanced. From public area maintenance to traffic regulation, from not huge but pretty sufficient grocery shopping choices to high quality dinning selections. I feel more and more satisfied for Indy recently. Maybe I started to have the feeling of belonging here...

Ok, back to the topic. After discussion, we decided to give Siam square a try since she didn't quite have Thai in the U.S. before and it was also a good chance to have a night tour around downtown. BTW, Siam Square is located in Fountain square area, so a little southeastern of downtown.

So here we come!

First of all, except for several pepper/chili based dishes like green curry that I am going to mention later, most of their dishes have spiciness choice: mild(not spicy), medium(default), hot(a small dab of Thai red chili paste), Thai hot(a big dab of Thai red chili paste). Based on my feel, the "medium" is not spicy enough for a spicy lover. But reasonable as a "spicy dish". The "Hot" is just right for spicy lover. "Thai hot"...is...really spicy! But basically the secret is just the red chili paste and you can adjust to taste.

We ordered a Thom Yum (冬阴功) soup which is a featured sour spicy soup in Thai cuisine. If the restaurant can nail down Thom Yum, it passed the very basic test. 

First impression, there are not so many things in it. Compare with the price ($9.5 for a bowl, maybe 3-4 serves), maybe not that valuable. The flavor is ok. Not as complex and sophisticate as the one I had in Beijing. But still relatively refreshing and Thai-like. It just passed I guess..as fair..LOL

We also ordered an appetizer called Chicken Satay ($6.5) which basically has 5 chicken skewers marinated with Thai spices, fried and paired with peanut butter sauce and a pickled cucumber sauce. Sorry I didn't have the sauce picture here.

This tastes really pleasant. The skewer and both of the sauce. Maybe a little bit over sweet? But still within acceptable range. The good thing is it's not heavy at all and the chicken meat (I think they use tenderloin rather than just breast meat which is good!) is quite tender and juicy.

Then comes the entree. My friend ordered the Drunken noodle ($11.95+2 for shrimp) which is suggested by the waitress and I also read about this online a lot. Basically it is tomato-basil intensified Pad Thai. But with really wide rice noodles rather than linguine-type rice noodles (Of course the type of noodle used in Pad Thai depends on restaurant).

It looks really appealing from the appearance, and it also tastes pretty good. Again, maybe a little over sweet. The basil is regular basil rather than Thai basil. Maybe they want to show friendliness to Americans. The sauce is rich but not heavy. The ingredients are quite generous and shrimp is also good.

I ordered the Green curry with tofu ($12.95). For some reason I fell in love with green curry and tofu recently.
It is a coconut milk based soupy dish with bamboo shoot, green beans, basil and green eggplant. It comes with a bowl of steamed jasmine rice.

There are not so many ingredients either, but the soup is quite rich (again, good thing is it's not heavy) so it's ok for portion size consideration. The best serving way is to soak the rice with soup. So delightful!  

Dessert! Dessert! Dessert!

We ordered Thai ice cream with sweet rice ($6. Taro flavor ice cream this time) . They also have coconut and mango choices. 

The purple is kind of too drama because typically Taro flavored stuff is just a tinted purple in my mind. But it is impressive that I can tell this is house-made ice cream because there is still little taro chunks in it! The sweet rice is soaked in coconut milk balanced with slightly saltiness.  Great thumb up for this dish! 

I found it's a little difficult at first to explain the plant Taro to the westerns. It's a root vegetable with the size similar to butternut squash (also varied from 6-inch to 10-inch length-wise). The cooking and eating way is quite similar to sweet potato. So it can go savory or sweet. But it doesn't have strong flavor itself other than really subtle aroma and sweetness. After boiling/steaming, the texture is creamy and starchy just like Russet potato. 

Taro is quite popular as a vegetable in southwestern China and Southeastern Asia. Taro is also a popular flavor all over china and Asia. There is actually mashed Taro in Asian cuisine. And I had Taro flavored ice cream since I was really little and it reminds me of my childhood a lot.

 

The plant Taro！You can buy them in international/Asian grocery store like SARAGA, Asian mart and Viet-Hua market if you are in Indy area. Most of them sell it as fresh produce version (shown in the picture), peeled and vacuumed bag version or frozen version. I preferred vacuumed version.

The ice cream I had since I was really little! Miss it so much....But see the light purple color?

As a summary, Siam Square is a good choice for American Thai. The ingredients and flavor are great. The environment and service is good. A little sweet for Asian taste bud but who doesn't like reasonable sweet?

Talking about Thai restaurants in Indy, actually I tried several ones and here is my ranking list:

1. Thai Spice: 2220 E County Line Rd, Greenwood.
2. Sawasdee: 1222 W 86th St, Indianapolis
3. Thai Taste: 5353 E 82nd St, Indianapolis
4. Siam Square: 936 Virginia Ave (Sorry for putting this far behind because it's still American in my mind)

Another fun fact is: if you pay enough attention to dinning news around downtown area. There is a new contemporary-style Vietnam Sandwich shop called Rook in fountain square area. I visited there when it just opened earlier this year. It is a really artistic place with pretty affordable great taste food. Although Americanize Vietnamese, still definitely worth visiting! I probably will post another review for Rook.

And the point is: I found the Rook and Siam Square actually have the same owner! And their locations are just across the street...