This Thai a real

From page 18

TO THE Palace, Cedric, and step on it. Gastronomic roy- alty awaits.

The rich Southeast Asian vari- ety. Courtesy this time of Eddie Chiu, who has brought his excel- lent Royal Thai Seafood restaurant. to the North Shore and installed it in the second-storey SeaBus-side restaurant that formerly housed

| Scallini pasta bar and Crossings restaurant, _ _ Chui operates a Vancouver wing of the Palace on Robson Street, but . this is his first foray on to the North Shore, and he has picked a _- Challenging locale. : First the hurdies: it’s one flight “ip. Second-storey restaurants take a lot of nurturing (Granite Cafe, can you hear me?) to biossom. ’. Drive-by profile is limited primari- “ly to BC Transit buses docking at | «the adjacent Lonsdale Quay bus terminal and cabbies dropping fares : Pushing Chadwick Court furarcuni. can be tricky. Available parking for the uninitiated appears non-existent. There is previous restaurant baggage, not all of which carries foud memories for area din- ers. ° rossings, for example, started

off with its own regal bang in 1987.

But after Peter Iscus cut loose the reataurant's downstairs component, Crossings drifted slowly into the

” Scallini followed in 1993 with a : bricf revitalized spaik, but it too! “ 800n faded, the victim of flagging

s But enough liombug. -We are now at the Palace. And livers the reyal goods: a superb -section of Thailand's exotic

ich seafood, meat, vegetable, poodle and rice dishes, prepared with | ted, green; yellow, massam -, and panang curriss; lemon balm, coconut milk; nuoc-mam; and © ; Spiced with ginger, coriander, saf- fron and ciinamon. Thai food, the authentic, high- ality version, combines the weeping variety of dishes and coatrasting food textures of : Chinese cuisine with the rich cur- ied complexity of Indian cuisine. Toss in the Thai mastery of bar- becuing, steaming. and frying and an appreciation for fine floral fla- vors, elegant dips and sauces and ‘ou have one of the world’s great nexploited cuisines.” ; Sampled bowls of Tom Kah Kai hot and sour soup with chicken,

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mushrooms and coconut milk) fea- tured a peppery coconut milk broth thick with mushrooms, sticed chicken breast and topped with fresh coriander.

An inspiring beginning.

Main course dishes of Chicken Panang Curry (chicken breast in a rich three-alarm coconut curry with bell peppers and lime leaves), Pad Thai (a rice noodle stir-fry with bean sprouts, shrimps and tofu dust- ed with fresh ground peanuts) and Nue Phad Gra Paow (beef sauteed in green chili and holly basil leaves) were uniformly first rate.

Entrees (an extensive listing of such items as Yum Woon-Sen, Tod Man Pla, Thai Satay, Tom Yum Po Tak, Mue Yang Num Tok) range from $8 to $14.

Service is polite, personable and professional.

The old Crossings room remains jargely intact, though the decor is now. trimmed in a restrained Thai motif, |

Porking remains a challenge.

The night of Table Hopping’s visit we parked in the Imperial lot beneath the adjacent Chadwick Court.

The lot used to provide Scallini and Crossings patrons with evening parking, but Table Hoppin: staf? retumed to find tickets demanding $45 for having parked the depart- ment's fleet of vehicles without displaying valid parking tickets on the appropriate dashboards.

Palace staff took the ticket off our hands and vowed to deal with the matter. The restaurant was in negotiation with Imperial to secure parking slots. That situation should be rectified by the time you read this. If not, I predict trouble at the Palace. The peasants will get rest- less fast.

That quibble aside, the Thai Palace follows Krua Thai as the second Thai restaurant to take root on the North Shore, but it is by no means second in quality.

. Itis a Palace fit for a regal cui- sine.

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