Bangkok Thai Cuisine

Thai cuisine, like many Southeast Asian cuisine, can be quite complex.  It's based on the balance of three to four fundamental tastes; sour, sweet, salty and sometimes bitter.  Personally, I've had excellent Thai food only a couple times in my life.  In those cases, the chefs were elderly Thai couples that opened the restaurants as something to do.  Bangkok Thai Cuisine has been around in Mobile for ages and came highly recommended.  I started going to Bangkok when I first moved to Mobile about six years ago and since then I noticed there have been some changes.

Crab Rangoon(5) $6

One of my favorite things at Bangkok is the crab rangoons.  Unlike the stuff you would get at Chinese buffets, there's real crab in these.  I haven't gotten been to Bangkok in a little while and noticed a difference in the execution. I like to pull these apart and eat it section by section.  There's usually plenty of filling to go around but not anymore.  Also, there's less crab in the filling as well.  That's probably why it didn't have that great seafood taste I have become accustomed to with these rangoons.  An order of 5 goes for $6; that's a a buck twenty a piece.  That's pretty steep for rangoons with little to no crab meat inside.

Tom Yum(small) $5

Bangkok does a really job with their soups.  I love them all.   I particularly fond of the tom yum soup.  I decided to share a small order with my brother.  It's just enough for two of your typical rice bowl size servings.  The soup consist of mushrooms and chicken in a sour and spicy broth.  I think the sour taste comes from tamarind paste and not lemons so it's much smoother. 

I also love Bangkok's tom ga kai soup.  It's very similar to the tom yum soup except coconut milk is added to the broth.  It makes the soup richer in flavor and of course slightly sweeter.

Bangkok has curry recipes down pat.  From a green curry to a massaman or panang,  I have not been disappointed.  These curries are different because what's inside such as as potatoes, carrots, onions, type of meat and the level of heat. However,  I can make curry fairly well at home so I don't order it when I go out.  I do recommend them if you like spicy food.
 

Volcano Beef $13

Bangkok has recently revamped their dinner menu to include a couple of new dishes.  I decided to try the volcano beef.  It's described as beef sauteed with bell pepper and carrots then smothered with a lava sauce.  It's then topped with homemade onion rings. I thought it sounded delicious and was suitable impressed when it was delivered to my table.  The execution of this dish could have been better though.  The beef are actually fried in a tempura batter and then added to the dish.  The big problem I have with this is the chunks of beef are totally mismatched.  Some are bite size and others are huge so when it was cooked some pieces were overly cooked and became tough.  There's also tempura chunks that only seem to be batter, no meat at all.  I picked the inedible pieces out. The onion rings were "light" but it needed some seasoning to bring out the flavor.  The lava sauce really saved this dish.  I dunked all those meat pieces in it and it becomes tasty.  If they can get meat to be consistent in size, this would be a stellar dish.

Pad Thai Beef $12

I know it's considering a "touristy" dish, but pad thai is also one of my favorites.  It's also one of the hardest to find done right.  Bangkok has disappointed us in the past with this dish but we keep on ordering it hoping it will be better.  There is absolutely no balance in Bangkok's version of pad thai.  From the picture, you can see the ridiculous amount of sauce.  It's not the amount so much that I have a problem with; it's how very sweet. it is. I would  even call it cloyingly sweet.  The sauce is just the start of the problems with this dish.  Thai food is notoriously spicy and there was no heat here.  In order to make it more edible, I would ask for their flavor tray.  There's chili flakes, sriricha sauce, chili sauce and fish sauce with Thai chili.  I would have to add plenty of chili sauce for heat and to balance the sweetness I would add the fish sauce.  After fixing it up, it's still not quite enough for me. I like to take the whole dish home and eat it several hours later that would give all the fixes I did to soak into the noodles.

Yummy Thai Tea

Service is all over the place at Bangkok.  While the waitresses are always nice, the food does not come out in a timely manner.  I would not recommend coming here if you are on any time constraint.  Lunch can take up to an hour and a half depending on the crowd.  However, I see a lot of people ordering out and those orders are typically ready when the customer gets to the restaurant.  I would call Bangkok very family friendly.  There's plenty of room for high chairs.  There's also a little toy area so if your little people wants to play while you eat they can.  I have also seen the waitresses sit down and play with children as well.