Not long before the roommate upped stakes to Florida, I went with him and some of his friends to Siam Rice & Noodle House for some Thai food reputed to be the genuine article. (The roommate and one of the friends are of Thai extraction, so their standards are high — I just look for the yum, they look for “like mom makes.”)
The big draw is the traditional sticky rice, which arrives in a little woven steamer with a lid. It is seriously sticky, and the way you eat it is to pick some up in your hand and roll it into a little ball, just like you did with Wonder Bread when you were a kid. This is, as you might imagine, intensely satisfying to do. It’s also very tasty rice, kind of nutty, and with a chewy elasticity to it that is fun to eat. You dip your little rice nugget into whatever else it is you’re eating — we had spicy beef salad, some chicken larb that didn’t pass muster with the Thais in the group (but i thought was not too bad), and some grilled chicken wings. The food is excellent, better than pretty much any Thai food I’ve had so far — less sweet, more savory, which is how I think it’s supposed to be, based on my experiences watching the roommate eat, and learning to cook pad thai from a Thai woman in Boston a few years ago, who said that no Thai food in the entire Boston area was worth eating.
A word of warning: do not be confused by the other place named Siam Cafe up the street. That place seemed pretty good too, since we stumbled in and read the menu before getting a cell phone call from our friends waiting for us in the correct restaurant, but the place we ate was called Siam Rice & Noodle House.
There’s also a banh mi place a few blocks north on Sheridan that I’ve heard is awesome, better than Ba Le, so I will have to head back up there sometime soon.