Love, Minnesota Style

It snowed last night, so I guess we're having a white St. Valentine's Day.

Brrrrromance?

Fair warning!

This Valentine's Day will be True Thai's ninth, and in each of the previous eight years we have been booked solid with reservations. So this is your reminder that Valentine's Day is less than a week away, and True Thai has already taken a lot of reservations. A lot of reservations. Tick, tick, tick....

We'll be wall-to-wall with young, not so young, old and not so old couples on Tuesday, February 14. Will you be among them? Call 612 375-9942 to make your reservations today!

I bet you did not know elephants were sexy. Well, until I saw this picture, neither did I!

Super Wings!

It's Super Bowl time and nothing says football like True Thai's Yummy Chicken Wings. Make your Super Bowl party a success by picking up some wings to go!

UPDATE: OK, this is not what I expected. All day today, Saturday, people have been coming in to pick up green curry sauce. Is green curry something you serve at a Super Bowl party? Or is it what you serve at a Super Bowl party where people just watch the commercials? I do not know, but I do know that none of the people picking up green curry sauce looked like Vikings fans (no purple jackets and no visible horns).

The Mystery of the Cotton Fortune Cookies

A mysterious stranger came to True Thai and dropped off these two fortune cookies made from cloth, complete with real fortunes. So adorable! (And so blurry — taking pictures with a phone is not as easy as it looks!) (Picture updated courtesy of Golf)

Thank you so much to our belated Secret Santa for sharing these with us!

Thank you for your votes

Just got word that True Thai is the Reader's Choice winner for Best Thai Restaurant in the upcoming Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine's annual Best Restaurants issue. True Thai has the best and most loyal customers of any restaurant in town, and I am again grateful to all of you for your votes and support.

Last year was very difficult for us. Losing Anousone "Ped" Phanthavong was a terrible blow to our kitchen but our loyalty to our employees was rewarded when some of the top Asian cooks in the Twin Cities applied for Ped's job. The new cooks picked up on our recipes immediately (I think Ped's spirit was whispering to them) and brought with them some tasty new dishes that have already made it to our menu.

So, on behalf of Ped, our new cooks and all the True Thai family, thank you for your votes and your continued support of True Thai Restaurant.

Weird food

I am no Andrew Zimmern, but I have eaten many strange foods in my life. That's why I was so excited when I saw this Ed Kohler post about weird foods. He wants to eat everything on the list and seems to be making a lot of progress. Here's the list with a check mark next to the 63 items I've already tried:


The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison √
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros √
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile √
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue √
8. Carp √
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari √
12. Pho √
13. PB&J sandwich √
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart √
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle √
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes √
19. Steamed pork buns √
20. Pistachio ice cream √
21. Heirloom tomatoes √
22. Fresh wild berries √
23. Foie gras √
24. Rice and beans √
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche √
28. Oysters √
29. Baklava √
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas √
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl √
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut √
35. Root beer float √
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo √
40. Oxtail √
41. Curried goat √
42. Whole insects √
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk √
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala √
48. Eel √
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut √
50. Sea urchin √
51. Prickly pear √
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone √
54. Paneer √
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal √
56. Spaetzle √
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores √
62. Sweetbreads √
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian √
66. Frogs’ legs √
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake √
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain √
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette √
71. Gazpacho √
72. Caviar and blini √
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail √
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum √
82. Eggs Benedict √
83. Pocky √
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef √
86. Hare √
87. Goulash √
88. Flowers √
89. Horse √
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam √
92. Soft shell crab √
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish √
95. Mole poblano √
96. Bagel and lox √
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee √
100. Snake √

I think between Ed and I we've eaten just about everything on the list....

Closed New Year's Day

No, it's not Songkran yet, but this is what New Year's looks like in Thailand

As we do each year, True Thai will be closed New Year's Day. We will be open regular hours on New Year's Eve and January 2.

Please have a fun, safe New Year's weekend and drive carefully!

Best Christmas meal ever?

If you really love food, your best meal ever is always (hopefully) your next meal. The cooks have been planning to make this Sunday's True Thai Christmas party the best ever. I am not cooking, but I am planning and I asked the cooks to reinvent a famous Thai dish, Pla Bo-Ran. Translated it means Ancient Fish, but the cooks came up with a fish dish that is very fresh tasting. Crispy Tilapia filet garnished with Thai chilis, lemongrass, cashews, shallots, thinly sliced garlic, mint and kafir lime leaves served with a special sauce made from hand-squeezed tamarind juice, palm sugar, salt and fish sauce. Not just fresh tasting, but nutty, crunchy and tasty too!

It's a "lost" recipe. I don't know why it's called Ancient Fish, but if you put that name into Google you mostly get pictures like this one:

Our Ancient Fish looks much better than this!

We know that most of you will be with your families this Christmas, but you can try Ancient Fish now if you like. It's not on the menu yet, but that doesn't mean you can't order it. Whether you ask for Ancient Fish or Pla Bo-Ran, the wait staff will hook you up with what will surely be our Catfish Salad's biggest menu rival for the affections of True Thai fish dish lovers.

The cooks have been fine-tuning the Pla Bo-Ran for a week now, and each time I've had it, it was better than the time before. I am very confident that this Christmas, I'll be eating my best Christmas meal ever. This Sunday would have been Ped's 39th birthday, and in honor of the occasion I predict no food will stick to any wok, the rice will be perfect, and each dish will turn out exactly as planned.

It's a private party for True Thai staff and Ped's family, but if you have no place to go this Christmas, you're welcome to spend it with us. You can email an R.S.V.P to me any time before Saturday morning, or stop by the restaurant in person this week. True Thai has a very big family, and there's always room for more.

True Thai will be closed December 24 & 25

True Thai will be closed December 24 and 25 as we do every year so our employees can spend time with their families.

Picture courtesy of Thai-blogs.com

We will be open regular hours this Friday, the 23rd, and Monday, the 26th. As usual, we will not be serving any Swedish meatballs or ham in the buffet this week or any other week.

Please have a very Merry Christmas! Drive safely and enjoy your holidays.

The best Christmas concert I ever saw

Not too long after I moved to America, a friend and I went to Lexington, Kentucky, one weekend looking for a surplus store. We parked our car and immediately got lost. While walking around we found ourselves walking past a long, long line outside Rupp Arena. We started asking people in the line where the surplus store was. No one knew but one guy suddenly turned to me and offered me a pair of tickets, saying, “here’s tickets for the concert. I have to go home, it’s an emergency.”

My friend tried to take the tickets but this guy would only hand them to me. In retrospect, I suspect he thought the concert would "blow my mind." Well, it did. "Back in the day" Anna looked like this. Needless to say, I had no idea who or what Pink Floyd was. The guy I was with made a big deal about the tickets, laughing and saying “you have no idea who this is or what's going on inside.” It was true that I didn’t know what I was in for, but I knew from the lines and the size of the arena that this was the biggest and easily the strangest crowd I had ever been in. 

Most shocking to me, even more so than being in the fifth row for a Pink Floyd concert, was the guy standing next to me. He was smoking marijuana throughout the entire concert! Being from Thailand I knew what marijuana was, but I didn’t know how openly it was smoked at Pink Floyd concerts.

I don’t remember the concert very well because the whole time I was watching I could not stop thinking about marijuana, especially because the guy next to me kept offering me some even though I wasn’t old enough to drink. For years afterwards I didn’t go to rock concerts because I thought I would get arrested and deported!

It was the loudest concert I’ve ever been to. It was also (inflation adjusted) the most expensive ticket I’ve ever used. I remember it as being a $100 ticket which, for a fifth row seat in 1987, sounds about right (further internet research confirms that it was the most expensive concert ticket of 1987). All I remember is that $100 was more than I made in a week working half-time as a lab assistant at the University of Kentucky.

It wasn’t until a few years ago when I told a friend about this concert that I finally realized what a big deal it was. How big a deal? The picture (below) is from the show I saw! In fact, Wikipedia has a long article about this tour, including a list of all the songs they played!  The concert was in early November of 1987, so it wasn’t really a Christmas concert, but I think of it as my best Christmas concert ever because it had the best Christmas lights I’ve ever seen. 

We never did find the surplus store.

Not a Christmas post

No, definitely not a Christmas post, but this made me laugh — a lot! I bet there is a very funny story behind that sign.

Yes, if a crew of hungry construction workers came in for lunch and all hit the buffet hard . . . then maybe we might lose some money. But even if they came in every day True Thai's buffet closes at 2 pm. Also, most construction workers only get half an hour for lunch so I think our bottom line is safe so long as we don't put any river prawn or scallops in the buffet!

The best gift I ever gave

I told you about the best gift I ever received in my last post. But not only was Ped's cooking the best gift I ever got, it was the gift that inspired me to give Amanda, one of our employees, the best gift I ever gave anyone.

Last winter, Amanda told me that she wanted to lose weight, just like I had done. So I signed her up with a fitness expert who counseled her about nutrition and helped her to do at least three cardio-intensive workouts a week. Please note that I said nutritional advice — not a diet! Trainers will tell you that the weight you lose while dieting is the weight that you will put right back on. What I learned and what Amanda found out was that the secret to weight loss is exercise, and the secret to keeping extra weight off is to eat the right kinds of food.

Amanda worked out faithfully and she lost sixty pounds in just six months! Because she changed the way she ate, the weight stayed off. Her mom told me that she went from wearing extra-large sizes to extra-small!

Ped's gift to me helped me to lose weight, and I passed it on to Amanda who has been coaching her friends on how to eat right. But best of all, Amanda's mom was working next to Ped when he cooked many of my special meals, and she learned from him how to cook healthy, nutritious meals.