Sunday, February 28, 2010

Another mystery solved

Sometimes things just happen, but usually I find that things happen for a reason. We have been selling more Tom Yum than usual for the last week and a half and yesterday, thanks to Google, I found out why.

City Pages had a Food Fight but didn't tell us. We were pitted against Sen Yai Sen Lek in a battle to see who had the best Tom Yum. That was not very fair to Sen Yai Sen Lek, a very good Thai restaurant in Northeast Minneapolis that specializes in noodle dishes. There are no noodles in Tom Yum. I think now you see why this was not a fair fight but thank you to Jessica Chapman for saying nice things about us:
You know the saying "Go big or go home?" True Thai definitely goes big. The product of going big is, logically, big flavor, and True Thai's got that too. Generous slices of chicken come with almost every bite and kaffir lime leaves show up about every third. Still, there's those dang mushrooms.
I also like the picture they ran but was puzzled by the fact that we have no purple tablecloths at True Thai. At first I suspected that they had adjusted the color a bit like I did when I was bragging about my cherry tomato plant last year (it's true — I boosted the color because the camera failed to capture the perfection of my awesome tomato plant!). But that does not explain why this picture shows sliced button mushrooms (we use straw mushrooms in our Tom Yum) or why I do not recognize that plate!

I think this is a stock picture. Here is our online menu picture of our Tom Yum:

See the straw mush- rooms? Notice that the bowl is not perfectly round unlike the serving bowl in the background of the City Pages picture.

I think this picture looks much more tantalizing than City Pages', but that is just my personal opinion.

I like personal opinions, especially when they come from bloggers who like True Thai! I recently found two new online reviews of our restaurant and because they say nice things about True Thai, I thought I should share them with you.

The Alchemist Chef likes our corn cakes and says that I am a "super nurse-restauranteur." I like her review a lot!

Blogger Red Pepper at Twin Cities Eats likes us too:
This is, in my humble opinion, the best Thai food that I have had in Minnesota. It is kind of shocking that I have never written about it but this changes that. I have simply never had a dish that disappoints. Apparently, many people think the same as the size of True Thai is at least double what it was on my first visits 5+ years ago.
I like that she brags about how long she's been coming to True Thai, and that she mentions our recent expansion. Friends have told me about how their friends all try to pretend they were the first to find us back in 2002. I think they are all correct. Each night I see faces I have been seeing on a regular basis for the last seven + years. True Thai has many loyal friends from across the Twin Cities and even Wisconsin and we love you all!

But almost every night I see many new faces as well and that also makes me happy. Thai people are very friendly and we like our new friends almost as much as our old friends.