Maenam Restaurant

$28 / Thai

After hearing great reviews about Maenam, the night finally rolled around to our reservation. It was a little early at 530, with an hour and a half limit. Understandable - it was busy. Were they strict about it? There was a gentle reminder, but not us, as we had 15 minutes to have dessert.

My previous Thai meals have mostly been your basic pad thai, yellow curry, sometimes a stir fried beef, so tonight was a step out of the usual.  The dine out menu at Maenam is a little different from the usual 3 course fare of other restaurants.  You order one starter, one salad, one curry, and one stir fry between two people, and then you each get your dessert.  It's a little bit confusing, but once it's explained, it's pretty easy - now you just have to agree on the same dishes.  Thai food is meant for sharing, so this was a good way to try more than one dish per course, and at the end of the day, you're technically still getting 3 courses.

For our starter, we went with the mussels, which were a good sized and juicy.  It had been tempting to get the one of the various soups, but those are usually on thai menus.

Salad: After debating between tuna and smoked salmon, we ordered the tuna salad, which was really tasty. The tuna was flavorful, though the sauce was a bit on the spicy side and not mixed too thoroughly (as I seemed to have ended up with a majority of spice). Oh wait - chili jam - that explains it.

 Curry: Another debate - pork or chicken.  We probably should've gotten the chicken, but the pork seemed like a good choice. A Burmese curry with pork belly and shoulder, the pork was tender, though a little lacking in portion size. The curry sauce itself though was very yummy drizzled over the huge bowl of jasmine rice we had to share. 

Stir Fry: 8 spice fish.  More debate as well, but less than the curry.  A fine choice of fish and caramelized tamarind and plum sugar sauce.  Great on its own, though the portion is a little small, compared to the halibut cheeks at the table next to us. 

Dessert: (S) DESSERTS! After hearing praise upon praise upon praise about the donuts, and a near promise to order them, we did something we hadn't done quite yet in dine out.  Now, there were only two of us - each with our minds set on a dessert choice already, so there was only one thing to do. We added on the 3rd dessert =)

My favorite (sorry BC and DC) was Maenam's Nam Tang Sai - a variation of a "popular side street dessert". It's a shaved coconut sorbet with candied thai fruit, and jasmine perfumed pandanus syrup.  As relayed, definitely very refreshing at the end of the meal.  Needed more sorbet though as there either wasn't very much or melted quickly despite my best efforts to snap the pictures quickly.

Next the housemade rice donuts with Thai ice tea ice cream.  The donuts were nice but perhaps I was too full at this point having finished the rice and curry. Wasn't a big fan of the ice cream, though my cousin really liked it.  It reminded me of the Japanese matcha ice cream.  Hehe, maybe put this ice cream in a tiramisu, and I'd be asking for more.

 


 
Last, and unfortunately least in this case, was the dark chocolate pot de creme with sea salt, tamarind tuile and tamarind semifreddo.  Our first question was how do we eat this? Well, it's actually like a creme brule, so you have to stab the candied top and let the tamarind fall into the chocolate mousse-like substance below.  Best to mix the tamarind and the chocolate together though, otherwise you get sour and you get normal chocolate respectively.  Reportedly though, the first few bites were good, but bites later were not as good, and leaning towards more sour.

So at the end of this food adventure, I must say, I'm still partial to my yellow curry and pad thai. Though if it's a Thai dessert, bring it on =) 

Food: Good
Service: Good
Recommend: yes - but go in a group of 4 or more to try more dishes.