Tuesdays with TT: Jaiya

A while back CT & I were trying to think of a place to grab some dinner before going to our local movie theater. (We saw The Town with Ben Affleck, a weird action/love story combo.) CT suggested we go for Thai, specifically to one of the best in the neighborhood, Jaiya. It used to be a great hole-in-the-wall type place, but renovated a while back to be more “trendy.” Luckily, the food quality has stayed consistent and prices are still pretty reasonable.

The first thing to note with this place is that everything comes with a choice of heat levels: mild, medium, and hot. As I learned, medium is pretty spicy and hot is for only those with a deathwish. We ordered everything medium and it really helped open up my sinuses.

CT says: If you’re with a mixed group, you can always ask for the side of chili options, which comes with gun powder (ground red pepper), chopped chilis in vinegar, a sriracha-type hot sauce, and a fourth that I cannot remember.

We started with Beef Lab. It is chopped meat mixed with mint leaves, scallions, cilantro, thai dried chili, toasted rice powder and lime juice. This was super fresh tasting with a ton of cilantro. The lime juice gave it the right amount of sour/acidity to balance out the dish.

CT says: This is one of my favorites! It’s a nice light starter and as TT mentioned, super fresh. I’m not usually a fan of cilantro, but it was chopped-up and mixed-in enough that I liked it here.

Since I was battling a little cold, I wanted to get some soup. I went with the glass noodles with ground pork soup clear soup with cilantro, white pepper and garlic. This was a delicious soup. The broth was light and flavorful. I have really began to enjoy the texture of glass noodles over the past year or so I have eaten them and this was no exception.

CT says: I really liked this soup, although I left most of it for the sniffly one. It was a great discovery as I’m always looking for a good soup during the cold season. I’m sure this will be delivered to my place more than once this winter.

For the mains, I chose the Pad Cashew Nuts- stir fried meat with cashew nuts, onions, oyster sauce, black soy sauce, roasted chilies and mushrooms. I went with squid as the protein for this. This dish was all about texture; the chewiness of the squid, the crunch of the cashew nuts, and softness of the mushrooms.

CT says: I liked the flavor of this dish and it definitely had a lot of texture to it. Unfortunately, I don’t love a ton of nuts in my dish – too much crunching. I happily ate around them!

CT insisted we get what she calls the best dish on the menu, Fish Chili Sauce. It is pan fried whole fish red snapper with chopped garlic and chilies sauce. This was a pretty amazing dish. The fish skin was nice and tender, while the meat was juicy and tender. The sauce was super spicy, so you have been warned.

CT says: YUMMM!! It was listed as market price, so I was concerned that it would be super expensive, but it was priced about the same as the rest of the menu. This is a must order if you go there and like spicy food of course.

All in all, Jaiya consistently performs well especially with the abundance of Thai restaurants in the Murray Hill/Gramercy area. The atmosphere is clubby, but the food and prices more than make up for that. You should definitely stop in if you are in the area.