![\"2016-05-19](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dub273.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/2016-05-19-11.30.46.jpg\")
<\/a>IF<\/strong> you’ve lived in Little Rock for any period of time and never tried Thai cuisine, you might ask “Why are these columnists and bloggers always wondering when we’re going to get a decent Thai restaurant? What’s so great about food from Thailand, anyway?”<\/p>\n The short answer:\u00a0because it’s not afraid to get into your mouth and kick your tongue right in the buds.\u00a0When you’re ready to branch out from\u00a0pad thai<\/a>\u00a0and discover a vibrant, saucy phat phrik khing<\/a> or the brazenly in-your-facehole\u00a0tom yum soup<\/a>, chances are you’ll become a fan also.<\/p>\n kBird<\/a>‘s\u00a0colorful papaya salad in the photo above serves as a tantalizing sample: an assembly of crunchy strings of green papaya flesh, dressed\u00a0with palm sugar, tangy lime juice and the pungent, salty fish sauce; a sweet crunch of roasted peanuts which\u00a0add additional depth and texture; and finally,\u00a0an ample dash of chili which\u00a0provides a delightful\u00a0lingering heat that opens up your senses for the bites to follow. The warm, slightly toasty sticky rice that accompanies it is perfect for capturing\u00a0the dressing from the\u00a0bottom of the bowl (can’t let it go to waste, now!). The range of flavors is exquisite.<\/p>\n And because it’s possible that the food isn’t salty enough or nuclear-hot enough, the really good Thai places bring\u00a0out the spice tray<\/a> to enhance the already intense sensations.\u00a0It’s tempting\u00a0to think of the spice tray as condiments, but it’s more accurate to think of the fish sauce, crushed chili flakes, vinegar-soaked peppers, or other items\u00a0as extensions of the basic ingredients.<\/p>\n So, in answer to the question: Why Thai? It’s bold, it’s\u00a0fearless, it’s\u00a0an adventure. If this were the mid-’90s, one might say it is the most exXxtreme<\/strong><\/em> of all the cuisines.<\/p>\n Oh, how I missed it!<\/p>\n When I moved to Little Rock in 2003, the city already had a pretty well-established food scene, but Thai was sorely under-represented. I had grown\u00a0to adore the abundant Thai restaurants\u00a0over my 17 years living in the Washington, D.C. area, and it took Little Rock almost a decade to bring it home with any sort of permanence. This made me Saddy McSadface. (Is that meme worn out yet? Shrug.)<\/em><\/p>\n But in 2016, here in the Heights, I’m within walking distance of two<\/em> places where I can get my fix! And I’m in easy driving distance of a third place at the Shackleford Crossing that is doing Thai the way I remember. Other restaurants are incorporating spicy Thai dishes into their menus to get in on the game;\u00a0basic ingredients that you normally wouldn’t find at Kroger, such as lemongrass and Thai basil, are finding their way onto store shelves.\u00a0Little Rock may be late to the Thai party,\u00a0but now we’re drunk on fish sauce, which is a disgusting\u00a0way to describe such a beautiful movement.<\/p>\n As I sat in kBird on Thursday and snapped the photo of the green papaya salad on my smartphone, it struck me how interesting it might be to revisit the Thai restaurant scene from my own perspective, to remember how barren it was\u00a0back in 2003, and work my way back up to the present day where I’m sitting in a fabulous Thai place which\u00a0I arrived at on foot<\/em>. It turned out to be too much for a single blog post, because it turns out I can’t stop yammering about Thai food.<\/p>\n So look to this space for upcoming entries, and please feel free to share your own.<\/p>\n Next time:\u00a0Absolute beginners<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" IF you’ve lived in Little Rock for any period of time and never tried Thai cuisine, you might ask “Why are these columnists and bloggers always wondering when we’re going to get a decent Thai restaurant? What’s so great about food from Thailand, anyway?” The short answer:\u00a0because it’s not afraid to get into your mouth … Continue reading “No Thai Like The Present: Part 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7yZGj-i","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n