'Blue Sapphire' Is a Hidden Gem
Pailin Thai serves great, inexpensive fare just like Grandma makes it
By Don Waller
Everybody has their favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant, usually located somewhere out of the way - or smack dab in the middle of any number of flashier, better-known, or better-financed competitors.
They're mostly family-owned, with storefronts that wouldn't merit a second glance, and they're mostly patronized by people who live in the neighborhood - and a fistful of wild-eyed aficionados, who, once having stumbled across the place, simply can't stop raving about 'em. Mostly because the food is surprisingly good - and extremely affordable.
So, after two years of nonstop coat-pulling, I and an unholy trinity of dining companions descend on Pailin Thai, which sits in the middle of three Thai restaurants found in the same building on the north side of Hollywood Boulevard, in the block east of Gramercy.
It's early on a weekday evening and most of the nearly 40 seats are full. We immediately order two pairs of Thai iced coffees and Thai iced teas ($1 each), unfold the 116-item menu, and start lobbying one another on behalf of what we each want to order. The only things we agree on is that it's too hot for soup and we're not interested in the many Chinese dishes on the menu, but hunger eventually produces a consensus and we decide on a collection of standards and offbeat items with everyone getting at least one of their favorites.
For appetizers, we'll have the Thai beef jerky and the fishcakes ($6.50 each). The former is thinly sliced strips of marinated meat coated in a sticky sauce with a lighter, spicier, dipping sauce on the side. It's bar food perfection. The latter are half-inch thick, dollar-sized medallions of deep-fried, mildly curried fish, again with a spicier dipping sauce on the side. We polish off the entire plateful.
Next up: a trio of salads. Shredded green papaya with dried shrimp, chilies, tomato, green beans, and peanuts with a splash of vinegar ($5.95) - a perfect balance of the simultaneously crisp, sweet, and sticker-in-your-tongue piquant flavors associated with Thai cuisine. A Thai spicy salad of sliced beef, cabbage, red onion, chilies, cucumber, and cilantro in a hot 'n' sour dressing ($6.50) is similar, but less sensational.
Although billed as a salad, the larb - ground pork seasoned with chili, mint, Kaffir lime leaves, and rice powder ($6.50) - is designed to be wrapped in a sliced cabbage leaf and eaten like a taco. I'll generally eat anything but mint, but this proves to be an exceptionally moist, delicately seasoned exception.
Then comes the chili garlic fish - a lightly battered, boned, butterflied, and deep-fried trout that all but melts in our mouths ($10.50) - and the Northern-style Thai sausage, an insanely savory combination of heat, spice, and citrusy notes that's an instant table favorite ($6.50). A side of steamed rice ($.75 per person) and we're almost set.
Meanwhile, the traditionalists among us opt for a rather mild green curry with shrimp, bamboo shoots, and green beans floating in the bowl of stock and coconut milk ($6.95), and a chicken Pad See Ew - pan-fried noodles with broccoli, etc. - that's about as far from the gristly, greasy concoctions so often foisted on the public's palates as we are from starvation.
We suddenly realize that we completely slammed the kitchen staff, who still managed to get everything out on time. We also realize that our eyes were far bigger than our stomachs, so we call the sole waiter over to wrap up the substantial amount of leftovers and begin peppering him with questions.
Not surprisingly, he's the owner, a Bangkok native whose name is Andy Makkern, and that's his wife and mother back there in the kitchen. He tells us they opened in 1994, that "Pailin" is Thai for "blue sapphire," and that everything is purchased fresh from the local Thai market that morning and cooked to order, noting that if we'd wanted our food more or less fiery, all we had to do was ask.
He adds that unlike most Thai restaurants, they not only make their own sausages but also their own fishcakes, using a freshwater Thai specimen (knifefish). We ask about the absence of alcohol; he says if you've got a receipt, there's no problem - and no corkage fee.
Since the bric-a-brac décor is typical of hole-in-the-wall favorites, I ask my chief coat-puller how he found this place. He says one of his business associates is a Thai national who told him her favorite restaurant was "Pailin Thai - 'cause it's like going to my grandmother's house for Sunday dinner!"
Published: 08/23/2007
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