Try Thai Review

THE name Try Thai should come with an exclamation mark as a command, or a question mark as a suggestion. With neither the name feels empty, incomplete, hanging around for someone to finish it off. It's neutral.

It did the job, it just didn't delight, there was little of the light and refined character of the best Thai meals I've had.

Neutral doesn't describe the decor, which is gold and rust red with big areas of patterned glass. It's a vivid look but on the tasteful side of vivid and comes complete with elaborate wood carvings and a charming logo of a dancing, prancing Thai girl.

Not so tasteful is the TV screen in the restaurant which flashes up pictures of food, drinks and various offers and deals. It's a distraction. I don't want filmed on-selling while I'm eating. Especially when every now and the vaguely worrying words 'Why don't you enter yourself?' appear.

Made my eyes water.

The food didn't. It didn't do much. It was all right but I'm finding it hard to recall and I visited less than a week ago.

Starters of coriander beef (main picture above), spring rolls, vegetable tempura and Thai crispy calamari were the best of the meal. The vegetable tempura was wonderfully light with the veg beneath al dente, the calamari were good too with a spicy dip. The coriander beef was delightful in a sticky yet crispy case. None of it had the wow factor though.

Mains of beef yellow curry, beef garlic and ginger, crispy belly pork in a red wine and brandy sauce and a chicken fried rice for the youngest diner were mostly dull again. The crispy belly pork was the star, as rich and appealing as the colouring scheme around the room, with a spiced up snap and bite that meant the whole portion was eaten, unlike with the rest of the food. All the rice was perfectly cooked, the jasmine rice was particularly lovely.

But generally the food seemed thrown out of the kitchen rather then caressed through to the dining room. 

Part of the problem was the beef. It was of the lowest grade, frying steak standard, and had that coarse almost dirty flavour reaching out through the other ingredients. It was only drowned out in the good coriander beef starter.

I usually follow fellow Confidential writer Ruth Allan's advice over this and stick with seafood and fish in Thai restaurants. These are ingredients which demand more delicate handling allowing the cuisine to speak. Next time I'll revert.

A shared pudding of a banana fritter with a lush ice cream provided a pleasant ending. Clunky yet rewarding.

We'd arrived early evening and gone for the set menus, £11.95 for two courses or £14.95 for three. If we hadn't done so, starters would have cost between £5.25 and £6.50, and mains around £10 to £13, more for some of the fish dishes.

The set menus were maybe a mistake. They restricted choice. Items on the a la carte menu such as aubergines with chilli and holy basil or clear stock soup with fishballs sound better than much of the stir fry crowd pleasers on the set menu - the speciality drinks such as rainbow bean mix sound fun too. Indeed Try Thai has a bar on the ground floor which may be worth a review in its own right.

Those considerations aside, I found the food matches the name not the decor. Like the strangely incomplete phrase of Try Thai, it's neutral. I realise this contradicts several of the Confidential readers who've written purple prose in praise of the place. 

Try Thai is no better or worse than the mass of Thai restaurants that have arisen across the continent of Europe. It did the job, it just didn't delight, there was little of the light and refined character of the best Thai meals I've had.

Try Thai. I have now. But Try Thai again?