Foodstalgia - Thai Street Food (With Ample Digression)

(This is not a review. A recommendation, possibly. With a hint of segue to my next entry. I cannot do reviews. I am bad at it.)

Spending quality time with Aisha conveniently is going to get a whole lot difficult when I move back to Langkawi. (Wait, move BACK to Langkawi? Yes. I moved back to the Klang Valley and now moving back to Langkawi. Want to know the details? It will only cost you a plate of nasi ayam goreng kunyit.) So I am letting her choose where we go on dates for the remainder of my stay in the Klang Valley. OK. I confess. Maybe I let her choose 50% of the time. (Is it really "let" when she cannot make up her mind? Discuss in the comment section!)

She chose Go Thai in SS2, Petaling Jaya, a restaurant she wanted to bring me to eons ago but never gotten the chance till last Friday night. I am not sure how the crowd is during any other time but there were not too many people at the establishment when we arrived around 8:00PM, perhaps five other couples. I did not expect Go Thai to be serving food popular to tourists in Thailand. All Thai food places I have been to prior to my visit to Go Thai does sharing, ala carte meals rather than the individual meals one might find in a tourist hot spot in Thailand. (Actually, who am I to write about tourism in Thailand? I have only REALLY travelled to a Thai destination ONCE in my life, yet. The "not really" travel to Thailand was with my parents... about 15 years ago when I used to wear football jerseys. Naturally, I forgot almost everything about that trip.)

Ordering dishes to be shared like in this picture is usually the mode of serving in the Thai restaurants I have been to in Malaysia. This picture was taken when I was in Koh Lipe with a couple of my friends. The Malaysian in us decided to order sharing dishes on our first night. We had pork belly with basil, masaman chicken curry, seafood tom yam, and stir fried mixed vegetables, with of course a plate of white rice.

I looked at their menu and I was confused at first since I am not used to Thai restaurants in Malaysia serving food like this. (Writing this a second time makes me wonder why am I making this such a BIG deal?) I got myself the pad thai (I asked for very spicy) and a glass of iced Thai tea with no straw. Aisha got some sort of minced basil pork meal that came with white rice and a fried egg. Forgot what it is called. And she got this refreshing pandan lemongrass drink with no straw. Yes, "with no straw" is an important part of beverage orders because that is how I am going to gauge what food places to recommend on this blog (if anybody really cares). You bring me straw when I told you not to? No recommendation! (My recommendation does not matter.) In addition to our own meals, we ordered some pork-on-a-stick (a plate of three sticks). The "sticked" pork were charcoal grilled.

Inside Go Thai restaurant. Super clean with very simple decor. Note how the couples were seated. The lady always facing the entrance. Originally, Aisha and I were sitting in opposite arrangements, then we decided to "conform". Haha. No picture of the outside and entrance. Again, this is not a review.

My yummy pad thai.

Aisha's comfort food basil minced pork meal. The minced pork may look dry in this picture but once you put a spoonful in your mouth you can taste the salty juices from the seasoning and the pork. I know it is just a fried egg but I feel like people do not pay attention to much on how a fried egg is served to a customer in a restaurant. Go Thai fried this egg perfectly: not burnt sides, all whites were fully cooked, and the yolk just half cooked. Perfect.

Baby girl with my Thai iced tea and her pandan lemongrass drink WITHOUT STRAWS. Tasty and refreshing drinks, no single-use plastics used, and gorgeous wench equals WIN.

Pork-on-a-stick, or known to me as "pork butter" from my trip to Koh Lipe. Haha.

The meal was very tasty! My pad thai was... pad thai. I thought it tasted, smelled, and looked authentic. (I had to add more chili powder/flakes to turn up the heat.) It had chicken meat with thinly sliced read onions and even some crushed peanuts. Most importantly, it tasted like pad thai (because some Thai places in Klang just cannot get it right)! The best way for me to describe Aisha's meal would be that it is comfort food. I had minced pork growing up when I visited my grandparents' place over the weekends and it tasted similar. But Go Thai's minced pork had the extra dimension of basil in it. Very delicious. The iced cold Thai tea was delicious, very standard really. Aisha's pandan lemongrass thing was... refreshing. Both drinks, to me, were not that sweet. And the pork-on-a-stick tasted amazing! You could taste the charcoal smoke in the meat. I thought the cook used liquid smoke but they actually started a charcoal flame in their kitchen to grill the pork! Love the taste of pork glazed with sweet and salty marinade. YUMZ.

Other than tasting exactly the same, the foods and beverages costed almost the same as when I was in Koh Lipe last month! What a coincidence! The two main dishes we ordered cost about RM12 which is about 100 bahts with the current exchange rate! The only pricing "anomaly" would be the pork-on-a-stick, which is funnily labelled as "pork butter" in Koh Lipe. I paid RM2.50 a stick (20 baht) so three sticks would make it RM7.50 but Go Thai charged about RM12. So while I was spending some quality time with my Love and consuming delicious food, these similarities reminded me of my Koh Lipe experiences. I felt joy, romance, and satisfaction. 'Twas a beautiful night.

My pad thai I had in Koh Lipe last month. Interestingly, I also had pad thai from the same restaurant in Koh Lipe the year before! Mighty tasty! The Koh Lipe pad thai had larger and more peanuts compared to Go Thai's. 

"Pork butter" for 20 baht. We frequented this joint opposite Siam International Clinic along Walking Street in Koh Lipe. We frequented this stall multiple times everyday we were there and I always got "pork butter". It is seriously very tasty. And Go Thai's "pork butter" (it goes by a different name in Go Thai) tasted very similar to the ones I had in Koh Lipe.

"Pork butters" flanking a sourish, Thai pork sausage.

We visited everyday.

Like seriously everyday.

Go Thai SS2 is a very clean restaurant with extremely friendly staff members that cook up very authentic Thai "tourist" foods (foods that I think are conveniently eaten by tourists in Thailand, tourists like me) at a reasonable price. In addition to this, they obliged to our instructions of not presenting our drinks with plastic straws. A very nice place for a date and for get-togethers without having to decide what sharing dishes to get. Food and beverage selections may be small compared to the other Thai restaurants but I bet the rest of the dishes would taste as amazing as our orders.