Siam Nara - a first look(s)

Soon after all the great comments on this post, the Missus and I headed up to Siam Nara, one of the three restaurants owned by Suree Suksudecha of Amarin Thai. Or perhaps as I heard a customer on his cellphone trying to give his friend instructions calling the place, "sayonara"......

 

The interior of the restaurant is nicely done, lot's of gold, but not terribl y over stated. The menu is fairly large, and had many items that tempted us. The staff is very nice in the gentle, understated way of many Thai I know. From the napkins to the china, to presentation, you can tell that Siam Nara is trying for a more upscale experience, without being stuffy. Of course, having a young staff means sometimes humorous little things happen..... it seems that I could never get my glass of water refilled without some of it, or at least an ice cube or two falling to the table. And yet, the effort was there.... and we appreciated that.

Of all the items we ate during our meals; we enjoyed the seemingly most simple item, the Pla Yum Mameung ($14):

 
I'm not a big fan of tilapia, but it's mostly due to my upbringing where you'd see tilapia in drainage canals, and such. I recall fellow blogger RONW calling tilapia the mahimahi of the Ala Wai Canal, or something like that. In fact, as recently as 2005, I still had problems with eating the stuff. Chef Alan Wong actually covers the stigma of tilapia in his new cookbook The Blue Tomato. Anyway, I'm glad we tried this dish. The tilapia was perfectly fried, light, clean tasting, crunchy. The papaya salad, while nothing really special, and not spicy in the least (they never asked) was the perfect tart, sour, salty foil for the dish.

In second place would be the Pla Pad Cha ($12), which looked like something we would have gotten right off the boat dock at Tha Chang, right down to the baby green peppercorn.

 
The overall flavor was surprisingly mild..... I was expecting something worthy of Yai Restaurant. The tilapia in this case tasted a bit on the muddy side.

The Crystal Noodles, a fancy way of saying Pad Woon Sen with Shrimp ($9.99) was pretty good.

 

This came served over a heating element...you gotta watch that, this started burning after a while. Lot's of black pepper on this, something that I've gotten used too with Thai food, the serve it that way in Thailand as well. The glass noodles were fine, gladly they were not over-cooked, but there was nothing that stood out. The Missus mentioned that even though it seemed that this restaurant was trying to be a bit more fancy than most, they didn't bother to devein the shrimp......

I just had to try a curry, since I've never been real happy with any version of Thai curry in San Diego. I went with the Gang Phed Ped Yang ($14 - a roasted duck red curry):

 

I liked the consistency of the curry, not too thick, and not too thin and runny. But as usual, barely any spice, way too artificially sweet, too much coconut milk, and you really couldn't make out the flavor of the duck in this dish.

Still, the food displayed promise, and the Pla Yum Mameung was very good; perhaps even better than Sab E Lee Santee's Signature Fish in some ways. So I kept this post on the back-burner, but for some reason we never went back. Finally, on a night the Missus went out with Her friends, I decided to return. What drew me back was a little conversation I had with one of the very nice young men working at Siam Nara. He told me the chefs were from Issan, and I had noticed a section of the menu listing "set" E-san dinners. I also quickly noticed Kai Yang on the menu, and in my mind's eye, I pictured something like this:

 

These photos were taken on the streets of Nong Khai, right across the Mekong from Laos. Kai Yang is one of the signature dishes of Issan/Laos. When done well, there's a whole myriad of flavors going on, salty from fish sauce and/or salt, perhaps some sweetness from sugar, wonderful touches of herbs and garlic......... it's some of the finest roasted chicken I've had.

So, of course I ordered the Kai Yang set ($16), which was presented quite nicely.

 

The chicken just didn't look right though. It looked like something that had been precooked then thrown on the grill to apply grill marks..... more on that later.

The dish came with some nice and hot sticky rice, perhaps a little too wet, but still, it was very hot.... the young man standing by the table started giggling when I began eating it with my hands. I guess he didn't expect that....he quickly brought me more napkins.

The Som Tum - papaya salad was the same as before, very mild. I'm thinking I'll have to take the initiative and actually order things spicy since they never ask; even for the E-san dishes. This also isn't close to an Issan style Som Tum, which is very similar to Lao style.

 

The sweet chili sauce, was just what you think.

My favorite item on the plate was the Num Jim Jaew, which I believe is usually called Nam Prik Num in Chiang Mai, and Jeow Mak Keua in Laos. It's an eggplant dip of sorts, and something I love. I make this at home once in a while after learning how to make it in Luang Prabang at the Tamarind Cooking School.

 

Nice texture, good savory flavor, decent heat, all that seemed to be missing was perhaps a bit more garlic. Still, this is the one item I finished and wished for more.

The chicken itself was disappointing. First, I dunno if you noticed, but the chicken in Thailand is a bit smaller; it's usually free-range, not that I realistically expected that here, but perhaps they'd go with all dark meat for more flavor? Here it was the large pieces, flaccid skin.....most of the Kai Yang or Kai Ping I've eaten doesn't have a crispy skin, but the skin has some texture other than rubbery.

 

That chicken breast was just sooooo dry, even slathered in sweet chili sauce. The main flavor that I could detect was that of the coconut milk, no lemongrass, garlic, kaffir lime leaf, basil, or even heat to speak of. I'm thinking I could do better at home, so maybe I'll try.

Even though the food leans to the "gringo" side for us, it's not sayonara to Siam Nara; like FOY (friend of yoso) "Liver" mentioned in previous comments; this place seems to do seafood really well. The prices aren't bad by San Diego standards and, I really enjoyed the service.

Siam Nara Thai Cuisine
8993 Mira Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92126

Some trivia:Did you know that Suree actually has her own cookbook? You can check it out here.

Comments

[Nate]

Once had a sashimi dinner in Seoul. It was farmed-raised tilapia! Very clean. First was served slices to eat wrapped with lettuce and kochujang sauce. Then a chigae (stew) was brought out made with the bones and heads of the tilapia. Hot, spicey and delicious!

[Kirk]

Hi Nate - I hear ya', but it's hard to get past the stigma.... I know, I eat silkworm larvae, fish "poo", but tilapia makes me pause.

[kat]

the first time hearing about tilapia on a food show I was like, no...these dishes look delicious!

[Chris]

The karaage turned out great- thanks to the double frying technique!!!!!

Looks like now time for some Kai yang, but something tells me that outdoor charcoal grilled thing has a lot to do with the flavor :(

(I don't have that)

[Janfrederick]

We went a few weeks back and really enjoyed the boat noodles. However, the salad with seafood had waaaaaayyyy too much fish sauce. Had I been a snail, I would have been dead faster than if I'd been in a French kitchen.

[Faye]

I've been meaning to try this place out so thanks for posting this!

Do you know of a place that serves really good Panang Curry? I know it's silly but I usually go to Spices Thai for Panang curry b/c i haven't been able to find something as good (or fast) as theirs so far.

Have you tried Chedi Thai in LJ? It's actually quite good. They serve a really beautiful Chilean Seabass (and not Tilapia!) that's awesome

[Kirk]

Hi Kat - Yeah.... it made me wince as well.

Hi Chris - Yes, over charcoal.....

Hi Jan - LOL!

Hi Faye - I've been there.... it seemed very Americanized. As for Panang Curry, I haven't found any place in San Diego that makes a great Thai curry of any kind.... but that's probably just me.

[MikeW]

Egg plant dip. Wife and I couldn't figure out what that was. Thanks

[Kirk]

Hi Mike - Someone requested a recipe; so I'll be posting that very soon!

[Roland]

Kirk, thanks for the review. I've been there a couple of times now and still can't put my finger on it. It's just not exactly there. I think in this next year we'll either see if they go more "Americanized" or more refined.

[Nate]

Using tilapia was tried in Hawaii some years back to market pond raised tilapia as sunfish - white or yellow, and supposedly clean, but it didn't last. Saw it mostly in Chinese restaurants.

[Lynnea]

yummy looking fish. I guess it can be hard to cook tilapia perfectly but one man's food is another man's garbage. I've heard stories of fishermen, back in the day, throwing away tuna belly!

[Kirk]

Hi Roland - I agree, some of the dishes have that, "it's good, but something's missing...." thing.

Hi Nate -I remember that... it didn't last because folks still knew it was tilapia!

Hi Lynnea - In the beginning, maguro wasn't even considered fit for sushi. There are a couple of wonderful books about the history of how maguro became so much in demand! As for the one man's garbage.... think of lobster, folks used to thick of it as garbage!