Takrai Thai

8280 Broadway
Elmhurst, NY 11373
CitySearch

I’ve been meaning to do a review on this place since my one and only ever visit on New Year’s Day.  Mostly because I know a lot of my friends/readers reside in Queens near here, and certainly a fair number of them frequent the Vietnamese places in the same shopping center as Takrai Thai, and I DON’T WANT ANY OF THEM TO GO HERE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THEY’RE GETTING THEMSELVES MIXED UP WITH. 

The place is pretty unassuming, and doesn’t feel particularly dirty (some places, you walk in and are like, omg, dirty!- this one isn’t).  It feels like your standard dirtiness I find in dive Asian places. 

My dining companion had eaten here before and since I hadn’t, we wanted to mix it up (we usually eat next door at either Pho Bang [Vietnamese] or Penang [Malaysian]).  He wanted so much to mix it up that he ordered dishes he’d never had before. 

We started first with a beefball dish.  When it arrived, we both peered at it and realized it was nothing like what we’d thought it might be.  I poked at one, and we decided it looked like balls.  Testicles.  Cow balls, actually.  (I highly doubt that’s what they actually were.)

I tried one, and to my horrified dismay, they were way too spicy for me.  I was crying and shoving lettuce in my mouth, slurping my Thai iced tea (see above right) (it was good, but standard), and overall just in major discomfort.  I refused to eat another one, but I will point out- for you spicy people- the ball itself was very chewy, and tasted similar to Vietnamese beefballs (which have a lot of cartilage to make it chewy), but very spicy.  My friend, who is a spicy veteran, also couldn’t stomach the spice after 2 of them, and did not like them at all.  He brought them home to feed to his brother. 

Personally, I adore satay- Malaysian, Thai, Indonesian, I’ve had good experiences with them all.  Since I’m not a huge fan of chicken, I generally order beef satay, which, if you’ve never had satay at all, is tender, fragrant, and delicious, dipped in the accompanying peanut sauce.  The meat is generally marinated for a long time, skewered, then thrown on a grill and cooked quickly.  Some places do overcook them, and it’s not always excellent. 

At Takrai Thai, they did not have beef satay.  I don’t recall if they had chicken satay, but they did have pork satay, which my friend and I had never before eaten, so we chose to order it (mind you, I do not eat pork generally, barring bacon).  When they brought it, we were both surprised to see (picture, right) that it was one long slab- perhaps the pork tenderloin?- on a skewer.  Let me tell you, this was f*cking delicious.  The meat was tender, fully cooked, and very juicy.  The peanut sauce was good stuff, and the marinated cucumbers on the side were great as always. 

The meal was looking good!

Next up was my pad thai.  This was alright; I liked that they kept the peanuts and sprouts separate, for you to add as much or as little as you liked.  I had to request an extra lime because the one they gave me was very dry.  The noodles were a little thinner than I like- I prefer my noodles a little wider, like fettucine (my favorite pasta).  But overall, the dish was tasty, though on the small side. 

My friend’s dish, pictured in the background, was a chicken/sauce/rice dish, which he said was okay.  He’d picked it randomly off the menu, so I can’t even tell you the name of it, but he was neither impressed nor disappointed with it.  I did not try it. 

Just as I finished my dish and was mentally noting the good parts of our visit, and the bad (service very inattentive after food came out), I wiped my fingers on my napkin and glanced down.  Occasionally, I “see” things out of the corner of my eye, so I wasn’t sure if I was only seeing things at first when I thought something moved.  I turned my head and indeed, something was walking across my napkin. 

A baby roach, about the length of my pinky nail.  I just stared, horrified, and signaled my friend, whose face masked my own.  We watched this roach, with not a care in the world, walk across my napkin, then over to my spoon- the spoon I’d just taken out of my mouth, off my plate, and put down.  Then he proceeded to crawl over my chopsticks. 

Finally, I motioned to the waitress to point at the offender.  She said, “Oh.” with not a trace of surprise, then leaned over me and used my napkin to squish him.  My dining companion and I sat there, glowering, until finally another waitress came over and half-heartedly apologized.  No further action was taken.  We stood up, paid our bill, and left, both swearing we’d never return. 

The thing that got me was, where the hell did the roach come from?  Did it- *shudder* – drop from the ceiling?  If so, he could easily have dropped into my plate while I was eating and I wouldn’t have noticed!  Did he crawl from the ceiling, down the wall, onto our table?  I thought roaches were usually afraid of people.  I wasn’t even sitting right next to the wall, I was on the outside of the table.  I also did not like the waitresses’ cavalier attitudes, like it was no big deal and I shouldn’t think it was, either.  Like it was just a normal occurrence. 

I should note here that I eat in plenty of restaurants that when you walk in, you’re kind of like, ew, dirty.  I grew up eating in Chinatown and Flushing.  That doesn’t bother me.  Seeing bugs/rats bothers me.  Seeing them ON MY TABLE bothers me even more! 

Yvo says:  If you really don’t care about bugs, then yeah, eat here.  The food- well, the pork satay was really good, and the pad thai was decent.  But seriously, how could you not care about bugs?  Maybe if the bugs were just on the walls? BUT THIS WAS ON MY FREAKING NAPKIN.  It’s so unfortunate because we also went here since I always complain about how spoiled I am, I won’t eat at Thai places anymore.  I can’t find a good Thai place because I’ve had really good homemade Thai food (particularly pad thai).  And a fair place fails to make the grade because of cleanliness issues.  Sigh.  (If you know of a really great Thai place in NYC- Manhattan or Queens- please let me know.)