Thai in Taipei: Sukhothai

Cuisine: Thai

Location: Zhongxiao East Rd. No. 12, Sec. 1 at the Sheraton Hotel

Price: $$$

Food: 3.5*

Service: ***

Overall: 3.5*

There are many places to eat Thai in Taipei, most prominently Thai Town, a massive chain restaurant in Taiwan that puts out some very good (if not totally authentic) Thai food. Growing up, it was always my go to restaurant for Thai food. Although the cuisine is altered for the customer base (more Chinese flavors, less Thai), I think that it helped give me an appreciation for traditional Thai food while I was still developing my palate and less willing to try funky tasting foods or items with names I couldn’t even pronounce.

That said, I’ve since been to Thailand a couple of times, and absolutely love authentic Thai cuisine. From the intense heat of the curries to the fresh seafood, whether it’s pineapple fried rice or shrimp cakes, the spices and flavors of Thai cuisine are so different from its Southeast Asian brethren. When my aunt suggested that we go to Sukhothai, a supposedly more authentic and classy version of Thai Town, I was happy to say yes and excited to try it out.

Thai Iced Tea

I love Thai Iced Tea – that distinctive flavor it has, combined with the sweet condensed milk, all serve to make the drink very unique to Thai cuisine. I rarely eat Thai without ordering it – and at Sukhothai, the iced tea was delicious, without being cloyingly sweet. The spices in the tea blend were strong enough to give the iced tea that unique, Thai flavor that I always look for when drinking this.

Spicy Seafood Salad

The seafood in this salad was amazingly tender – despite being a chilled salad, the calamari, mussels, and shrimp were very easy to bite into while also providing the bite that the salad needed. Marinated in a sweet-and-sour dressing and topped with some crunchy pickled vegetables, the dish really helped stimulate my appetite and get me ready for the upcoming meal.

Shrimp Cakes

My favorite part about shrimp cakes is that delectable, crunchy fried batter that coats the shrimp. When done right, the crunch perfectly complements the tender, chewy shrimp. Here, the cakes were much thicker – giving each bite a fuller taste and feel. Personally, I prefer the delicate, thin shrimp cake, so I was left wanting for more. The sweet-and-sour sauce was a tiny bit on the sweet side for my liking, but the flavors were all still there, and as a whole the shrimp cakes weren’t bad.

Crispy chicken with garlic spicy dipping sauce

 The chicken came out with what looked like a beautifully crisped skin – but under further examination, I realized that the skin had soaked up all the chili dipping sauce underneath and turned into a flaccid, soggy mush. While the chicken was very tender and the sauce was both tangy and spicy, giving the dish a kick, the fact was that I had expected crispy chicken and ended up with soppy chicken. I suspect that the chicken was already pre-done¹, which contributed to the demise of the poor chicken skin.

Grilled marinated pork neck with spicy dipping sauce

I don’t know if I’ve had pork neck anywhere besides in Thai cuisine. Pork neck is very tender, and here it’s finely sliced into thin pieces so that they can be dunked into the sauce and soak up all the saucy goodness. More pork neck, I say!

The skin on it has that nice grilled char flavor to it, while the onions on the side provide the crunch that the dish needs. Add to it a spicy dipping sauce (what felt like the 187^th variation of spicy dipping sauce that our meal had), and the single bite of all the components explodes with flavor and texture in your mouth. This was my favorite dish of the night.

Wok-fried minced pork with spicy chili and basil

I know there’s spicy chili on the side meant to enhance the flavor of the pork (spicy dipping sauce #188!), but I thought the pork was a little under-seasoned. The basil flavor came out nicely, but the pork was monotonic in flavor, and the dish had the problem of being in that textural gray area – it wasn’t a crispy dish, but it wasn’t tender either like the chicken. I think making it more texturally compelling would have helped the dish a lot

Red curry chicken

Green curry chicken

Pretty standard fare as curry chicken goes. The chicken was tender, the vegetables were well cooked, and both sauces packed a nice punch. Eaten with jasmine rice, the dish gets so much volume from the rice soaking up all the curry sauce – this is a dish that’s impossible not to like.

On the other hand, I was hoping that they would find a way to elevate their curries to a point where it was distinguishably better than the curry offered at Thai Town, and in that sense I don’t think Sukhothai did. So while the dish was good, for a lower price, a very similar copy could be had at Thai Town.

Coconut ice cream and banana spring rolls with melted cheese

The coconut ice cream was great – a clean, refreshing bite that helped bring my taste buds off the barrage of spicy food they had been subjected to over the course of the meal. The spring roll, I really didn’t care for. Even though it was nicely fried, the bananas were mushy and the sauce made this dessert too sweet. Also, why was there melted cheese? That was a truly bizarre flavor combination that I didn’t like at all. I wasn’t sure that was what the rolls were topped with until I took a bite – and the taste was an offensive burst of saltiness that washed over the mushy bananas. It reminded me of accidentally opening my mouth under saltwater and being shocked to my senses with a bombarding of salty, disgusting water.

Last thoughts: As Thai food goes, the meal had its ups and downs, but some of the dishes that Sukhothai trotted out were definitely well-done remakes of Thai classics. More than anything, this meal will serve to mentally prepare me for my dinner at Next in August, where I have insanely high expectations and am waiting to have my views of Thai cuisine changed for the better.

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^{1. This observation was based on the insanely fast speed at which our dishes were trotted out. Since I’m pretty certain it’s not possible to create the eight or so dishes we ordered in 30 minutes and serve the rest of the restaurant simultaneously, I’m going to go ahead and say that nothing here was made to order (or, as they say on Top Chef, a la minute – doesn’t that sound so much classier?). Obviously, that saves cook time, especially at a restaurant where many of the orders are repeats – but if it affects the quality of your food, that’s not a good thing.↩}