THAIGER
Cuisine: Thai
Address: 2 Surrey Cres, Grey Lynn
Phone: (09) 360 0695
Reservations: Accepted
Drinks: Fully licensed
From the menu: Chicken satay $17; green papaya salad $20; pad thai $29; laksa $29; tofu spring roll $14; cauliflower nasi goreng $27
I’ve been eating
When Albert St’s famous Food Alley closed down, the team behind E-Sarn moved into a restaurant at 205 Hobson St, where they now offer around 100 different dishes, mostly from the northeastern Isan region from which the business takes its name.
You know you’re in the right place when you order something from the far reaches of the menu and the old woman studies you for a second and then says quietly, “no”.
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I’ve been told no before, at the tiny Thai stalls inside Avondale market, and to be honest on that occasion they were right to warn me away from the thick, fermented fish paste I eventually succeeded in buying.
But at E-Sarn they could be a little less conservative they were worried that I’d be put off by the pork bones in one dish and if you’re up for something more exciting than pad thai and green curry then do take a chance on something from their home patch, whether it’s the familiar larb or something steamy and soupy that tastes like it’s been ladled straight out of a cauldron.
If you’re after a dish you know, and to enjoy the full restaurant experience, you’ll do well at Thaiger, the restaurant I’m really here to review, in a high-profile Grey Lynn site from the owners of Wok Express.
Unlike E-Sarn, Thaiger has an interior designed to be enjoyed with a glass of wine, before and after your meal.
Though a separate counter is set up for takeaway orders and delivery drivers, it doesn’t seem to impact on the atmosphere much and although we arrived soon after 5pm opening for a family dinner, there were plenty of tables filled with students and escaped mums.
The items on this menu are much more familiar though there is the odd surprise, like a full list of vegan dishes, a rare thing in a cuisine where fish sauce rules the kitchen.
My 11-year-old daughter opted to go vegetarian a year or two ago which we allowed with one condition if she was going to avoid meat she had to say yes to everything else. She agreed and now I’m sure she eats as widely as anyone, beef and lamb aside.
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Advertise with NZME.She smashed through a couple of good tofu spring rolls fried and flaky with sweet chilli dipping sauce, following it up with a pretty decent fried cauliflower rice which she enjoyed on its own merits, thankfully unaware that half the people in the room were probably eating it so that their Keto stick turned the right colour when they went wee-wees later.
I make peanut sauce so often at home (typically pouring it over a couple of cooked vegetables and calling it gado gado) that I’d forgotten how good the real thing can be.
Most online recipes start with half a cup of peanut butter mixed with some hot water but that fork in the road will take you far away from a good Thai satay which has none of that smooth processed feel and is brighter (in appearance and taste) with the brittle crunch of roasted peanuts, freshly ground in a mortar.
A good cook fries the curry paste and coconut milk until the fat separates and at Thaiger you can see this in the finished product, which is spooned generously over chicken skewers, so much of it that you have no hope of getting through it all.
In this dish and in the green curry the chicken is unbelievably tender, a trick I guess they achieve by marinating it, but given that the strips of meat are thin and nowhere near any bone or fat I can’t quite believe how good they get it.
That green curry is a crowd-pleaser, big and soupy with loads of fresh vegetables including something you only ever see in a restaurant like this carrot sticks carefully ribbed, for your pleasure.
Service is fast and friendly but almost invisible, though we tested them when one of my sons inevitably knocked over his glass of water and the other got up to take a look, slipped over in the puddle and landed on his back next to the “Caution: Wet Floor” sign the waiter had somehow managed to erect midway through his fall.
Your own dinner here will be much less eventful from a physical comedy perspective I’m sure, and if you find yourself hankering one Sunday afternoon for some old-school Kiwi Thai and good drinks to go with it, Thaiger won’t disappoint.
