Novi Siam Spicy:Novi

Today we ventured out to Novi Siam Spicy (which as you might expect from the name is in Novi) in the West Oaks shopping center. The store is just another strip mall space with a typical asian restaurant interior. They have a varied, moderately price menu which includes soup for lunch. Marshall of course ordered the Chicken Kow Pad Prik (67) and I my usual Chicken Gang Mus Sa Mun (27). They had the Chicken & Rice soup at the table before we even ordered and that had good taste but salty. Normally lunch is also served with shrimp chips but never arrived at the table. Marshall's food was delivered pretty quickly with excellent flavor, but a little more oily than he likes. After checking with wait staff twice, and as Marshall nearly finished his meal, my entree finally arrived. It was more a soup with an extremely runny sauce and mostly onions with very little chicken, potatoes, or peanuts. I found its taste disappointing. Marshall's meal was a pretty small portion and mine was even less. Even without factoring in the missing shrimp chips and poor service this store delivered a very poor value. Factor in those and normally we wouldn't consider a revisit to this store. Being that Marshall and his wife have eaten her previously and had good experiences we might give it another try. That will be quite some time off.

Darryl: 3/10
Marshall: 5/10

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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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