Thai Village Restaurant
10/415 Remuera Rd
Remuera, Auckland.
Ph: 523 3005
Open: Lunch and dinner seven days
Website: www.eatout.co.nz/thai-village-restaurant.html
HERALD ON SUNDAY RATING: * * *
KEY POINTS:
Regular readers will know that I have avoided reviewing Thai restaurants. It is - if I may quote myself - "not because I don't like Thai food but because it's hard to think of what to write. The food is either good or very good and cheap or very cheap.
The only two Thai places I have written about have helped me out by being bloody awful - and one of them went the extra mile by being bloody expensive as well.
The problem is that if it's easy enough to tell bad Thai food from good Thai food, telling the good from the excellent is a bit harder. And, having spent the obligatory fortnight in the country, I am left with the distinct impression that Thai cuisine changes when it emigrates.
It shouldn't be surprising if it does. A lot of Asian food has a different playing strip at home and away: I ate butter chicken in Agra and it was hellishly hot and black as pitch, and you can't get a decent feed of dog in the Vietnamese places here.
Food tastes different out of context. You can't recreate in Auckland the sensation of that hole-in-the-wall place in Hanoi, or Assisi for that matter. But I suspect that an immigrant cuisine undergoes the same sort of adaptation as an immigrant, becoming more palatable, less "different". I am not disputing that there is a Thai dish called Nau Yang Lerd Roat (although I Googled that precise string of words and the only result was this restaurant's menu) but it looks to me like a dish they laid on in case someone came to a Thai restaurant and wanted a steak.
Likewise I doubt that they serve "Gulf of Siam" (combination seafood salad) or "The Drunken Chef" (stir-fried noodles with beef) down the Khao San Rd.
But, using the classification system mentioned above, Thai Village is pretty good and pretty cheap. The place was recommended to me by a couple of its regulars, who were journalists when I was still in short pants. As a result, I knew in advance that, although it's in the Remuera shops, almost over the road from the Post Office at the top of Victoria Ave, it is best accessed from the carpark at the top of Clonbern Rd.
We had booked for five and arrived as six. I decided not to tell them because I wanted to see how they dealt with it. They were superb, re-laying tables and moving us, on request, from an inside to an outside spot (it was a very warm evening) with many smiles and a minimum of fuss.
I enjoyed leaving all the ordering to a couple of volunteers and they, sensibly passing over appetisers, did a damn good job: the aforementioned steak, seafood salad and stir-fried noodles were complemented with a creamy red chicken curry, and a dish of fried duck with basil. The hit was the whole snapper, fragrantly steamed with ginger and chilli; our waitress - who removed the entire skeleton without, as it seemed to me, even disturbing the flesh - may have a future as a surgeon.
It was all perfectly charming and comfortable, no worse than any other Thai place I've eaten at here - and much better than two I could name. What more can I say?
Wine list: Standard, beers and cocktails. BYO corkage a reasonable $2 a head.
Vegetarians: Dedicated menu of 18 dishes.
Watch out for: The steak.
Sound check: Conversation-friendly.
Bottom line: Friendly service and food.
