We were there the other day and the food was good. Sticky Rice on the other hand (a week earlier) was very disappointing. I had a soup there (SR) that even my vietnamese friends thought was way too heavy on the fish sauce.

As I and others have noted, while not everything at Spoon is a home run, when you taste a dish in the kitchen's wheelhouse it can be spectacular. The latest on that list is tap waan, which is translated as "sweet liver salad". It has all of the elements of a great larb, with perhaps a bit more sweet, toasty rice than the norm. Other offal-laden larbs around town are good too, but they sometimes have unevenly cut pieces of meat which lead to unpleasantly dry, chewy bits. Not here, where the luscious slices of liver are equisized, tender and moist. It's a fabulous dish.

Less fabulous is kaeng som kung sot, a tamarind and shrimp paste based soup with shrimp and vegetables. Tasty broth, but unfortunately it's served in a bubbling hot pot with a heating element underneath, so what might have been crisp-tender vegetables and succulent shrimp all turns to mush in relatively short order. I don't understand the logic behind this serving technique for such a dish.

The bubbling hot pot stew is, for what its worth, fairly authentic based on my experience with Thai expats and Thai restaurants in Cambodia.

kaeng som kung sot is one of my mainstay orders at Spoon when I'm with a big group. A bowl is ladeled out to everyone, and after a round or round and a half, no solid matter is left in the soup to overcook. In my experience, soups like this are meant to be a part of a shared meal.

The broth is pretty spectacular - sour and intensely spicy. A little goes a long way.

Habibi wrote:The bubbling hot pot stew is, for what its worth, fairly authentic based on my experience with Thai expats and Thai restaurants in Cambodia.
...

Yes, I have had hot pots as part of Thai meals (I think it's called suki). My issue is not with the method, but with the way it is executed at Spoon. Elsewhere, the bubbling broth is served in the hot pot and the vegetables, meats and seafood are served raw on the side. Diners cooks the stuff when they're ready to do so. That makes sense. Serving a hot pot that already has shrimp in it doesn't.

Kennyz wrote:

Habibi wrote:The bubbling hot pot stew is, for what its worth, fairly authentic based on my experience with Thai expats and Thai restaurants in Cambodia.
...

Yes, I have had hot pots as part of Thai meals (I think it's called suki). My issue is not with the method, but with the way it is executed at Spoon. Elsewhere, the bubbling broth is served in the hot pot and the vegetables, meats and seafood are served raw on the side. Diners cooks the stuff when they're ready to do so. That makes sense. Serving a hot pot that already has shrimp in it doesn't.

You think they dumbed it down for you or does everyone get the same preparation?

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:

Kennyz wrote:

Habibi wrote:The bubbling hot pot stew is, for what its worth, fairly authentic based on my experience with Thai expats and Thai restaurants in Cambodia.
...

Yes, I have had hot pots as part of Thai meals (I think it's called suki). My issue is not with the method, but with the way it is executed at Spoon. Elsewhere, the bubbling broth is served in the hot pot and the vegetables, meats and seafood are served raw on the side. Diners cooks the stuff when they're ready to do so. That makes sense. Serving a hot pot that already has shrimp in it doesn't.

You think they dumbed it down for you or does everyone get the same preparation?

=R=

possible, but that would mean they also dumbed it down for Catherine S, a prominent Yelper. Unlikely.

Still dont see the problem if its being served and eaten immediately.

True but I do not think that is the intent. Defeats the point of the hotpot.

We had a great meal at Spoon this week--banana blossom salad, kanom buang yuan, Isaan sausage, pad prik khing all in top form. Just wanted to add another data point given the recent report from Stevez and Jazzfood--hopefully that meal was just an anomaly.

I had lunch at Spoon the other day with a couple of friends and my wife too. Since my wife works often Lincoln Square, one or the other of us has eaten at Spoon a few times this summer, and pretty much we had not enjoyed these meals. I was hoping that this lunch, more in their prime hours--our meals lately have tended to be at off hours--as well as a big commitment to the "real" menu, would produce a meal more like the Spoon of yore. I would say that this meal improved on what we've had of late, but it still did not meet the standards of what used to be.

I do wonder if there's been a change of ownership at Spoon as no one looked familiar. In addition, the dishes, especially the fried chicken, appeared subtly different from classic Spoon versions. A lot of the stuff we had was good; I really loved the dressing for the raw shrimp, but nothing just overwhelmed. I did not walk away from this meal, like I have in the past (and I mean pretty past now), thinking this was the best Thai restaurant in the USA.

VI, my observation of the big Thai places on the North Side is like fantasy baseball. Ordering about 2 meals a week, every week of the year, from a lineup of Sticky, Aroy, Spoon, and TAC (with one or 2 others thrown in, very rarely) makes for a big sample and allows some trend spotting. I get a feel for where these places are. It's not surprising when an infrequent flier sees Sticky, eg, have a mediocre day at the plate; even the best hitters strikeout now and then, but I know Sticky are batting at least .500 right now. Unfortunately, Spoon dropped out of the rotation at the JeffB house several months ago. Something's very wrong there. It's not what it used to be, hasn't been for a while, in my experience.

Ok. Maybe VI has gotten to the root of things. There have been changes to the Thai Fried Chicken. Smaller pieces with perhaps less time marinating (?), resulting in a less opulent, juicy texture to the meat, at times overwhelmed by the spices on the exterior which can be slighty burned. (I still count this as delicious, but I have noticed it more than once over the last year.) Could this be what people are referring to when they say the place has fallen off a bit?

Also, lately they tend to leave off the dried shrimp from the meang kham--once, even when I asked for it- and put on too much coconut, disrupting the balance of the dish.

But everything else has been just perfect. Crispy pork, crispy as can be with the bitter greens never overcooked or oversalted; Isaan sausage, sour, peppery and garlicky heaven; catfish custard, perfectly spiced and texturally light; banana blossom salad, the same inexplicable delight; waterfall beef salad, pungent and not too chewy with the crunch of roasted rice powder; shrimp paste dip with mackerel and vegetables, what a combo; mudfish curry, mmmm; enoki mushroom salad, fresh as can be, fried rice salad with pressed ham, what a concept! In short, all the same great fare. I could go on and on.

As far as I know, there has been no change in ownership and the same faces are there to greet me.

Josephine wrote:
Also, lately they tend to leave off the dried shrimp from the meang kham--once, even when I asked for it- and put on too much coconut, disrupting the balance of the dish.

Yes, the one bite salad was also a bit off, being pretty much all of dried coconut. It especially was missing the thai pepper. It was another dish that was once very good and now just good.

...my bad experiences have been as straight-ahead as completely awful, flavorless pad kra prow, pale and mushy with big, awkward chunks of bell pepper and bearing really no resemblance to what has been my favorite rendition of that dish for years (from Spoon). My impression was that kitchen time has been split between the regular cook and someone who has no idea how to make the stuff. And I've gotten food cooked by the latter too many times to justify the risk. For what it's worth, I'm most likely to order midweek delivery, almost never eating in and almost never ordering weekends. Could be that I have been unlucky in ordering when the regular cook is off, or maybe someone else handles takeout/delivery. In any event, consistency across nights/cooks/whatever has been an acute problem this year for me at Spoon.

I also have noticed an increased frequency in the percentage of mediocre meals I had over the last year at Spoon. But it is also true at some others of my "regular" Thai restaurants.
Usually problems revolve around imprecise cooking, especially of chicken and shrimp, unbalance in spicing, decreased quality of key ingredients such as flat noodles, ginger, basil, tamarind sauce, fish sauce.. etc. I was particularly disappointed with lunches at Sticky Rice, Sookdee (in Evanston) , Thai Pastry, Tac Quick, and even the new Jin on North Broadway. .
I am still happy with Tub Tim in Skoki, though.
Perhaps it is because less attention is paid by the cooks to the preparation of lunch dishes.

JeffB wrote:...my bad experiences have been as straight-ahead as completely awful, flavorless pad kra prow, pale and mushy with big, awkward chunks of bell pepper and bearing really no resemblance to what has been my favorite rendition of that dish for years (from Spoon).

Yuck. Pretty shocking. And sad, if that was your longtime favorite.

JeffB wrote: My impression was that kitchen time has been split between the regular cook and someone who has no idea how to make the stuff. And I've gotten food cooked by the latter too many times to justify the risk. For what it's worth, I'm most likely to order midweek delivery, almost never eating in and almost never ordering weekends. Could be that I have been unlucky in ordering when the regular cook is off, or maybe someone else handles takeout/delivery. In any event, consistency across nights/cooks/whatever has been an acute problem this year for me at Spoon.

As you say, I've heard that the kitchen is split between someone who concentrates on the "translated" items and the regular menu. But of course, there is some overlap. And the person who works the noodle beat is not the better cook.

My experiences have been mostly Friday and Saturday (and some Sunday) nights in the restaurant. I used to order delivery when I lived a block away. (OK, I confess that I am that lazy.) Dishes never suffered during the one block delivery time, but I imagine they might suffer quite a bit at longer distances. Still, it appears that Jeff has been getting food from the B-team, and that the delivery time is not the issue in that case.

There is a business problem for any restaurant when more than half of their clientele wants the dumbed down American-hyphen-fill-in-the-blank version of the menu and the other half demands "the real thing." When I eat at Spoon, the majority of the patrons appear to be there for the half of the menu I don't care about. "Not for you" is an old lament on LTH- though in person, I've never been discouraged from ordering anything at Spoon, there have been many questions to clarify the heat level I can tolerate, and occasional congratulations for ordering well. I can imagine that the proprietors might have a best-guess default setting for delivery that assumes a diner represents some modal customer and results in B-team execution. That, or the A-team is off mid-week.

Doubting this has anything to do with any of the comments here except possibly VI's but the owner has been in Thailand for vacation and isn't due back for another week or 2 I think (intel gathered when dropping off GNR renewal packet).

boudreaulicious wrote:Doubting this has anything to do with any of the comments here except possibly VI's but the owner has been in Thailand for vacation and isn't due back for another week or 2 I think (intel gathered when dropping off GNR renewal packet).

I don't think that has any direct result. During the really bad meal I had there which I posted about upthread, the owner was there and we complained to her about the food (the fried chicken in particular). She acted aloof and really didn't seem to care at all, which is completely different behavior than I had ever witnessed there before. No...something's definitely up at Spoon, and it ain't good.

Just as a point of reference, we ordered in from Spoon Thai last night and enjoyed all the dishes: banana blossom salad, boat noodles, name khao thawt. All tasted the same as ever. Sorry to hear about others' unsatisfying experiences.

I order in weekly as well and haven't had any significant issues. Once about 2 months ago I had an order of Nham Khao Thawt that was a bit overly crispy (yes there is such a thing ) and the pork in the chinese Broccoli with crispy pork was a bit leathery the last time I ordered but these were two issues in probably 20 orders. I'm pretty content with that track record, especially for delivery. YMMV.

Living just a few minute walk from Spoon Thai and loving Thai food to the point where I want to eat it at almost every meal, I've had a number of recent experiences at Spoon Thai (as well as several meals at Aroy, TAC Quick, Sticky Rice, Rosded, and one each at Jin Thai and Me Dee). I have not noticed any change in quality - none, zero, nil . . .

Steve, I understand you're angry over your reported meal and interaction with the owner of Spoon Thai (yes, she has vacationing in Thailand), and yes, they have a new server, but there is no conspiracy at Spoon, and there is nothing to fear. To those who have had "a" bad meal, or a couple dishes that weren't quite right, abandon Spoon and bash it at your own expense.

I have been to Spoon Thai several times in the last month, and twice in the last week with friends. I've had Isan sausage, catfish curry custard, banana blossom salad, the crispy rice with pressed ham, pork neck larb, crispy pork with Chinese broccoli, Thai beef jerky and shrimp with red curry. All of the above were excellent - the sausage was as flavorful and juicy as ever, the shrimp/curry featured perfectly cooked shrimp and a fiery red curry (as requested), the catfish custard as excellent as always . . . Spoon's version might be the best I've ever tasted, and the crispy rice with pressed ham everything it has ever been.

Now I haven't had the fried chicken lately, so if there's been a change, I'm not aware of it. In the past, I have noticed a lack of consistency with the one bite salad. But I'm not aware of any Thai restaurant where every dish is great and satisfying to all. Have you had the ground beef noodles at Aroy Thai? I love Aroy, but if all I ate was that beef noodle dish and knew nothing more, I'd never eat at Aroy again.

So calm down folks. Go to Spoon, order some of the dishes I mention above, and enjoy. And if you don't trust me and wish to abandon Spoon, no problem . . . it'll just make it that much easier for me to avoid the wait on a Saturday night.

Mod Note: The tangent about ceilings at ethnic restaurants has been split into its own thread:

Invisible ceilings at ethnic restaurants?

Thanks,

=R=
for the moderators

Ronna and I have kept away from Spoon for a while now after a few less-than-good meals and some truly crummy service. In response to BR's singing of Spoon's praises in this thread, we decided to give the place another chance and are glad that we did. The most striking change from our prior few visits was in the service. This time service was terrific, from our attentive server, to the fact that the owner checked in on us twice to see how we were enjoying our meal.

What we ate:
Banana blossom salad - I loved this slightly warm, coconut milk rich salad.
Picked bamboo shoot salad (sup naw mai) - Though I much prefer Aroy's take on this dish, it had a nice tangy funk and made a good start to our meal.
Tom yum soup - Good, solid version.
Grilled pork neck - The only real miss of the night, the pork had an odd, flabby texture and no char.
Nam khao thawt - This really is Spoon's signature dish and just about always a winner. Love that crispy rice.
Crispy pork and Chinese broccoli - Perfect. This was the best rendition of this dish that I've had anywhere. The pork belly had such great crunch, and the sauce was rich and garlicky, and the broccoli was cooked just enough to soften a bit but retain it's snap. Wonderfully prepared.
Red curry chicken - Nobody is going to write any songs about this dish, but it was fine. I'd love to see them making this dish with dark meat instead of boneless breast, but I have to admit they did a very nice job keeping the chicken strips moist. I would have liked a bit more fire in this curry though, as I asked for it to be made "very spicy."

Overall, this was a good meal, and I still think Spoon deserves to be on any list of Chicago's best Thai restaurants. The excellent service we received that night solves my biggest gripe with Spoon, so we'll throw them back into our neighborhood restaurant rotation and see what happens.

--Rich

Husband and I dropped in for lunch today. First time for the both of us and we were quite satisfied and are looking forward to our next visit back. Went in at around noon and only one other table became occupied after we sat down. We started with the baby egg rolls which were tasty. I had the Ka Nom Jeen Nam Ya which is the ground catfish in curry paste with noodles. The server asked if I wanted it spicy and I said yes. My husband had the Than pepper steak. He had been reading this thread here and he actually wanted to order the fried chicken but did not see it listed on the menu. I told him he should have just asked the server. He also thought about ordering the sweet and sour mango chicken but for whatever reason did not. He was pleased with what he did have. I have to say his beef was pretty flavorful. I adored mine to pieces even as four alarm spicy as it was. I let my husband try mine and his exclaimed "You're going to need a new butthole after eating this." He loves spicy but even for him, he couldn't handle it. Lucky for me, I could.

I only have one minor complaint and that was the crap ass Katy Perry song playing in the background. I can deal with cheesy 80s music (which was also being played) but I really cannot stand Katy Perry.

Spoon has been offering a special of Khao Soi lately, but last night was the first time I tried it. The Khao Soi at Spoon was decent, but I much prefer the versions served at Jin Thai and Sticky Rice.

The Khao Soi at Spoon appropriately featured both soft and crispy fried noodles, but they were the ultra thin egg noodles and I prefer the wider, flat egg noodles, which are also more typical of what you'll find in Chiang Mai. Also, the Khao Soi at Spoon was not served with the usual accompaniments (lime, shallots and pickled greens) which are a nice balance to the ultra-rich curry.

Although I probably won't order the Khao Soi at at Spoon again, I will say that the Naem Khao Tawt was its usual outstanding self.

Oh, how I long for Spoon! Post here on your recent experiences, and give me some virtual thrills, please!!!

Has anyone tried the Durian Cake? I'm told by my daughter that they recently added this dessert.

A friend and I ate here last night, after not having been since early summer. The service was good, but overall the food was definitely sub-par compared to (all) our previous experiences.

Boat Noodle Soup - Now has egg noodles, as opposed to rice noodles. Very weak anise taste, it seems more like they threw in a little Chinese 5-spice powder instead. The cuts of beef were all quite fatty, and overcooked. Huge letdown.
Crispy Pork with Chinese broccoli - Though not as good as in the past, one of only two good dishes last night.
Naam Tok - Beef was overcooked, and the salad was quite bland - there was a decent amount of mint, but no heat, little lime, and it seemed like the chef may have walked past the dish while carrying a bottle of fish sauce.
Neua Daet Diaw - Over fried, under seasoned. Definitely a let down.
Mussel Omelette - This was the other good dish of the evening. Pretty much as good as it used to be.

With all the other great Thai restaurants in Chicago, I don't think I'll be heading back here again, unless something changes in the kitchen.

I've unfortunately moved on from Spoon after too many off delivery meals. More variation coming from that kitchen than most. That said, I don't get the concept of "overcooked" meat in boat noodles - it's essentially a long-cooked stew with noodles and veggies added at the last minute. Seems like complaining about overcooked pot roast or birria.

I hate hate hate to say it, but my experiences at Spoon early this fall led me to believe that things have definitely declined there. The Thai fried chicken, the Isaan sausage, the one-bite salad, the banana blossom salad, all pale imitations of their former glory. I had been hoping it was a weekend/weekday issue, and I really hate to admit it, but I've moved on. Fortunately, this is literally true, as I no longer live around the corner. However, I have yet to find a Northern Thai restaurant in St. Louis. . . .

Not sure it matters but I have to disagree--I've ordered in delivery from Spoon 3x in the last 5-6 weeks, including last night, and everything ordered during that period (issan sausages, name khao thawt, raw shrimp salad, curried mudfish, red curry with chicken) was excellent with one exception (boat noodles--they need to deliver this with the components in separate containers--by the time it was delivered, there was only about 2 oz of broth and some VERY over-saturated noodles--but they were definitely rice noodles unlike what was reported above). I have had a few issues with the broccoli with crispy pork over the last few months (shoe leather pork) so haven't ordered that in a while. But the rest have been consistently delicious. All the thai places I love (Aroy, Tac, Spoon) have different specialties--and none of the things I love at one are made (or, in the case of the sausages, made as well) by the others so I'd be disappointed if any of them really fell off the rotation. Far as I'm concerned, all is still a-ok at Spoon.