Thai Cafe Restaurant at 4160 Hastings Street in Burnaby is a place I have been wanting to go to for years. You know how much I love Pad Thai and now that I know how to make authentic Pad Thai, the happier I am letting the professionals do all that work.
The Restaurant
To give you some context, we had just come from an apartment showing and needed a place to talk as well as eat.
Reg had been to this small but slightly modern restaurant before and loved it. By the way, generally, he hates Thai food which made Thai Cafe Restaurant all the more intriguing and enticing for me.
The Food
I of course ordered the Pad Thai with prawns and asked for super mild. It looked authentic enough to me. Clearly they used tamarind paste and palm sugar which was great but I could not taste fish sauce or dried shrimp so that seafood-y-ness I love so much was not there.
If there was lime juice sprinkled on top, I could not taste it. It was extremely salty so some acidity would have helped a great deal.
Reg ordered the Thai Fried Rice with chicken and absolutely loved it. It was kind of his perfect dinner.
Do not let my photographs fool you, there were lots of people coming in and out of the restaurant to have a quick bite to eat.
It was quite the surreal evening. The place we had gone to for a showing would not let us into the bedrooms. In one, a man was sleeping and the other, well, they just would not let us go inside.
Our apartment hunting did not start off well and we ate our food trying not to panic about potential future homelessness ahead.
Or about the disappointment and shock at how people are so desperate to find a place in Vancouver that they will say yes without seeing the bedrooms.
The restaurant is lovely, the service was wonderful but my Pad Thai was lacking. Due to the surreal nature of the evening, I do not feel right giving it a specific rating. We were not in our right minds as we sat there confused and scared while we ate our meal. I will say however that I will not be back for the Pad Thai. It definitely was not the “real deal”.
The Move
In the meantime we have sold most of our furniture since we will be downsizing to fit into micro-sized Vancouver apartments, eventually.
I can tell you though that I have never been so discouraged and scared about finding a place to live in the 10 times I have gone apartment hunting. The most frightening thing is that apartment with the mysterious bedrooms had the biggest kitchen I have seen so far. The foodie future is looking quite tiny and grim.
The bedroom with someone in, I kinda get (even though, really?). It’s the other no access room that scares me 😱
You know, now that some time has passed I wonder if it was drugs. They were all laughing about us not looking into the rooms. It was a very weird experience. A total waste of our time.
So sorry you have to go through this mess.
Ack. Really does blow wet monkey balls.
Thanks and you’re right, it does.
Yeah, it’s NEVER a good sign when they won’t let you see the entire apartment. I’ve got all my fingers and toes crossed for you guys that you will find a decent place soon. Sending you all the best wishes I can!
You know it has NEVER happened to me before that they wouldn’t show a whole place but considering some of the slums I have seen since… All I kept thinking was bed bugs! Thanks Debra. We need all the help we can get.