Thai Garden:Ferndale

We stopped at Thai Garden on the recommendation of a co-worker for this afternoon's adventure in Thai food. This is another simple restaurant tucked into a small, neighborhood strip mall with a simple, light Thai theme (though oddly they didn't have any lights on inside). We sat down and were quickly delivered a couple bowls of Hot & Sour Soup. A quick look through the menu and we located our usual dishes, at very low fees, and placed the order for one F1 Chicken Kow Pad and one SP10 Chicken Gang Mus Sa Mun. We sampled the soup while waiting for the main course. It was pretty good but suffered from a starchiness that killed it for us and neither one of us finished our soup. The real disappointment came once the entrees arrived. Marshall's Kow Pad was by far the worst fried rice dish we've experienced. It had a burned taste to it though not burned, and the chemical taste of Doritos. My Gang Mus Sa Mun was very mild – both spice and flavor – with rubbery peanuts, flavorless potatoes, and chewy, fatty chicken. We did what we could to finish the dishes and hoped for better results as we dug in. Before we hit the halfway point we had to cut the losses and left the remaining dishes on the table and left. Our co-worker who recommended the venue received a thrashing when we made it back to the office and without question we will not be returning.

Darryl: 1/10
Marshall: 0/10

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Thai Fresh:Novi

Marshall and I visited a place he spotted off I-275 at 8 Mile Road for lunch this afternoon. Thai Fresh was a nice looking diner-style Thai restaurant reasonably busy though we were able to quickly get a seat. The menu appeared to be pretty full but common, and the lunch prices about average for most Thai restaurants of its style. We quickly ordered and received our complimentary egg-drop soup. This was terrible and I wasn't able to tolerate more than a single spoon as it had more salt than I could take (it tasted as if it might have been enough salt to exceed the suggested intake for an adult male for an entire week). The chicken massaman curry I ordered (with brown rice) was presented well though with more onions than others typically include and in a smaller portion than most. Again I found it to be heavy on the salt but not as spicy as I like from my "medium" heat. Marshall on the other hand ended up with more food than expected from his chicken fried rice but wasn't impressed by it's flavor either. In both cases the rice hadn't been cooked well and we were generally disappointed. While the food wasn't good, we've had worse. The service was much the same. The icing came when we received the check and were charged an extra $1.50 for brown rice (20% the price of the entree)! This is not a restaurant to which we will be returning.

Darryl: 2/10
Marshall: 1/10

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