Sripraphai, Round 2

Sripraphai has long been lauded as the best, most authentic Thai in New York.  When I went last year, I never saw the lines people warned me about, but I hadn’t gone for dinner on a Friday night apparently.  LTS/BFF and I decided to go last Friday and pulled up to see this madness outside the restaurant.

Well, it looked like madness, taking into consideration a few things: there is nothing else on that block that these people would be waiting for; the restaurant, while close to the train, isn’t near much else; and do you see how many non-Asian people are waiting for this Thai restaurant in the smack dab middle of Queens?  All these things really piqued our interest.  BFF had never been, and I was craving some of those shrimp cakes.  In any case, it turns out that Sripraphai has a very organized approach to things – not sure how this works in bad weather, but basically, you go inside and receive a number, and they ask you to wait outside.  There’s an electronic sign that flashes numbers, they input whatever they’re ready for and you head back inside when your number flashes.  The wait wasn’t actually that bad (and we found parking quickly right across the street from the restaurant – around 7:30 on a Friday).

After poring over the extensive menu for a long, long time, BFF said “Let’s try this, it looks really good,” and chose mee krob.  I’d never had it before, but I was game – and you’ll see, by the amount we ordered, that we were both game to eat lots of food!

I’d thought the ‘nest’ part would be dryer, crunchy, and salty.  Instead, it was slightly sticky, soft but still crunchy, and slightly sweet.  It was, in a word, awesome.  The shrimp didn’t do much for either of us, serving, in my opinion, only to add to the cost of the dish, but mixing the crunchy delight with some fresh, raw bean sprouts, elevated the entire dish to simply fantastic.  (Note: as we were leaving, we noticed you could buy a container of ‘mee krob’ – just the noodle part – for about $4.50.  Not bad.  Maybe next time!)

As I mentioned, I was craving fried shrimp cakes, and was raving about these to BFF until finally she said “I’m sold! I’m sold! We’re getting them!”  Again, these were wonderfully fresh, bouncy and delightful to eat.  I love the texture and flavor of these – they don’t reek of shrimp taste, but are subtle in their flavor.

Probably our one misstep of the night, fried calamari.  When they arrived to the table, I immediately cringed from the fishy smell wafting from them.  Though they didn’t wind up tasting particularly fishy, they were simply OK.  Nothing to rave about, and we won’t be ordering these again.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name given to these on the menu, but the description was simply “noodles topped with ground beef and onion” – lots of gravy, with broad white rice noodles underneath.  BFF and I both inhaled this dish, finding it comforting and delicious.  We were postulating on how to make this dish for ourselves at home, actually.  Mmm!!!

For our final dish, whose name escapes me again, we ordered “saute noodles with chicken and yellow squid” – while these were good, we both agreed that the gravy noodles were more to our liking.  I guess we’re both just saucy girls!  😉

Yvo says: Once again, a delicious meal, and yes two girls ate all of that by themselves (well, we had a bit of the last noodle dish left and a bit of the fried calamari left… but not much!).  We’re big eaters, what can I say???  It was a great meal, Thai iced tea was good, and for all that food, with tip, it came out to less than $60.  Come on… how do you not want to eat there???
highly recommended