Restaurant review: Ginger Thai Cuisine

by The Law Reviewers of The Law Reviewers

DALLAS — In less time than it takes to find a parking space in the West Village, you will have been seated, ordered and appetizer’d at Ginger Thai Cuisine, a gem of a diamond of a sapphire of a turquoise stone (for you Santa Fe’ians out there) amidst, well, let’s face it, a pile of coal at the giant, vanilla shopping quadrangle known as the intersection of Marsh Lane and Forest Lane in northwest Dallas. Carp on a cracker, that was a long sentence. To make up for that, the rest of this opening paragraph will be in haiku:

Next to the Tom Thumb

Bring Your Own Bottle - pinot?

There’s never a wait.

A whole area code away from the foodie wallet vacuums in Uptown that play pretend Asian, Ginger Thai is friendly and unpretentious, and it will quickly become your official neighborhood joint, where you can pick up take-out in your best smelly jogging shorts and flip flops, or where you can sit in the corner with your date/spouse/Real Doll and sip the wine you bought at Albertsons because it had a funny label and was a dollar off with your reward card. Sorta like that guy in that movie with that thing where he was against that other guy, Ginger Thai is what you make of it.

The food is never expensive -- the most pricey dishes top out at $12.50 -- but it holds its own with the other well-known Thai places around town (which there should be more of. Our dream is that, some day, half of the new bank branches going up on every corner in place of gas stations will be gutted and replaced with Thai and Indian restaurants; we also have this idea for a Sonic-style drive-in tandoori chain called "Sit’thar". Shhh! Don’t tell anyone.).

Appetizers run the gamut from the familiar fried rolls and corn patties ($5.95) to more unusual temptations like fish cakes ($6.95) and the "fresh salad roll" ($4.95). The corn patties were crunchy and light, and (like most of the other appetizers) came with the traditional spicy and sweet cucumber sauce on the side that had the taste and consistency of spicy pancake syrup, not that we minded. Fish cakes were the big winner of our little appetizer-lympics. The pungent fish taste was balanced by a crisp lemon-grass-iness in the golden fried cakes. The salad roll was the lone head-scratcher on the appetizer list. It consisted of rice paper rolled around lettuce, rice, carrots, cucumber and the like. It was fresh and it was light, but it was also flavorless and boring.

Bring on the stir fry! Spicy basil sauce stir fry ($8.95) is a good place for beginners at your table, and was up to par with your standard Americanized Thai food. We opted for tofu as our "meat", and the fresh vegetables and the meatfu soaked up the sauce nicely. It was not so much spicy as peppery, hence the good-for-beginners comment. Lad Nah ($7.95), fried noodles with broccoli in "Thai gravy," was also a good choice for those afraid of spice. The gravy lent itself to the tofu or chicken, but was not overwhelming. If it's the spice you like, well, move over Sting and try the Pad Kee Mao ($7.95), another Thai restaurant staple. If you aren’t thinking about your next meal with this description – pan fried noodles with chili, garlic, tomato, peppers, onions and basil – then you're a freak of nature and need to go back to the attic with the other freaks, you freakin' freak.

We liked the Pad Kee Mao, which may or may not be a killing word (one more Dune reference and we get a free set of David Lynch movies!). Good old standby Pad Thai ($8.95) was acceptable in that it was a little more heavy on the tamarind sauce than other pad thais. Seafood curry ($12.95) had the usual selection of seafood which was not too chewy and mixed well with stir-fried cabbage that came with it, but the red curry sauce was a little too bland and sparse. Overall, this most expensive dish on the menu didn’t meet our high expectations for it, and unfortunately wound up in seafood dish therapy for the rest of its seafood dish life.

There are several dessert options, but we tried none on our visits, mostly because we had already binged on appetizers, unlimited sticky rice (plus brown rice on request), and the booze we brought along. Maybe next time we won't pair Boone's Farm with Thai food.

On our friendly neighborhood five-gavel scale, where five gavels is Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and one gavel is Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood, we give Ginger Thai three gavels, or that Sesame Street "People in Your Neighborhood" song – check it out on You Tube today, it’s 70's-licious!