Chada Thai

Rating: 2

We ate dinner here in January 2022.

Curry puffs
Tofu pad thai
Lamb massaman curry with rice
Caramel bubble tea

What a weird pad thai. Admittedly it was a vegan pad thai, so we were prepared for it to be a little different (no egg, maybe a little different flavour from no fish sauce). But veganism doesn’t preclude the pad thai staples of peanuts and lemon, both of which were absent. And you certainly don’t make up for a lack of animal products by drowning the dish in oil, which this was. Very disappointing.

The curry was better, with a nice sauce and meat that was tender, pretty reasonable on the lamb-you-find-in-a-cheap-curry scale. Peanuts were again a problem. There were upleasant peanut sinkers all at the bottom of the meal which had been “toasted” by someone who didn’t appreciate toasted peanuts. They had been grilled at way too high a temperature for a very short time, which had served just to put a bit of colour on the outside of what were in essence raw peanuts. For some reason the caramel bubble tea tasted like coffee as much as caramel. At least the curry puffs were good, nice pastry and flavour.