![\"Saigon](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dub273.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/saigon.jpg\")
<\/a>Absolute Beginners<\/h3>\n
IN<\/strong>\u00a0my previous No Thai Like The Present<\/a>, I discussed the magic of the food from Thailand, and celebrated the fact that Little Rock finally has\u00a0actual Thai restaurants\u00a0serving exquisite\u00a0Thai dishes, ones that take me back to the fare I enjoyed as a D.C.-area denizen. It’s a dramatic\u00a0change from 2003 (the year I moved to Dogtown), though\u00a0the road to today’s improved scene was full of bumps.<\/p>\n Lilly’s wasn’t the only Pan-Asian restaurant on the scene; Saigon Cuisine opened a couple of years after I moved to Little Rock, its\u00a0awning claiming “authentic Vietnamese – Chinese – Thai food”. Their menu went on forever and ever<\/a>, which usually tells me this isn’t exactly a laser-focused restaurant, but the entrees seemed enticing on (laminated) paper. Unfortunately the\u00a0Thai curry I ate on my first visit had more in common with curries from China and Vietnam than Thailand, in my humble, so\u00a0from then on I stuck with the Vietnamese items. The food was decent enough, but we stopped going after discovering pho at Van Lang. Saigon Cuisine packed up and headed to western Cantrell a few years ago (where according to this article the food was vastly improved<\/a>), then they moved to Conway, and then eventually moved out of existence altogether.<\/p>\n Van Lang Cuisine near UALR deserves a mention during this period, for its hot lemongrass soup with shrimp which was for all intents and purposes a huge, zesty, sour bowl of tom yum goong<\/a>\u00a0which I enjoyed immensely. I don’t believe it survived the transition to its new Korean owners<\/p>\n We had one\u00a0small Thai restaurant on West Markham, where Cartridge World now happily sits. I don’t remember its name; my memories of dining there are clouded by sadness. <\/span><\/p>\n Despite this being a dedicated Thai restaurant, I only managed two or three visits. I never had sit-down dinner service, nor ordered off the menu, so my swift harsh judgment comes\u00a0solely by the weekday buffet. I know, I know, I respond as you shake my shoulders violently and tell me “YOU CAN’T JUDGE A RESTAURANT BY ITS BUFFET” but I calmly reply with “Taj Mahal” <mic drop><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n Strike one: Most of the food on the buffet was\u00a0Chinese. Sweet and sour chicken, egg rolls, egg drop soup, and\u00a0only a couple of actual rather ho-hum Thai chicken curries doth not a Thai experience make. There might have been pad thai, or something else humdrum and stir-fried.\u00a0<\/span>If you’re going to claim you’re a Thai restaurant, you might start by serving Thai food.<\/p>\n Strike two: The dining room was dominated by a woman who I presumed was the owner; whoever she never\u00a0let me eat in peace. “You eat too fast!” she once complained to me. \u00a0(She wasn’t wrong, but I <\/span>was<\/em> there on a tight one-hour lunch break which didn’t permit a drive to and from the Heights and leisurely meal.) On another visit, she bemoaned her empty tables and went on a rant about how people of Little Rock don’t appreciate different types of food. “Only one Thai restaurant! Only one Indian restaurant! People here don’t want to try anything different!” Well, sorry, ma’am. It’s not us, it’s you. Strike three: The place closed not long after my last visit. I never\u00a0missed it, but it left\u00a0that gaping Thai hole even wider. I knew Little Rock would love a decent Thai restaurant, but it seemed pointless to hope.<\/span><\/p>\n Then again, who would have thought there would be a new Star Wars movie coming out in 2015?<\/p>\n Next: The Road to Recovery<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Absolute Beginners IN\u00a0my previous No Thai Like The Present, I discussed the magic of the food from Thailand, and celebrated the fact that Little Rock finally has\u00a0actual Thai restaurants\u00a0serving exquisite\u00a0Thai dishes, ones that take me back to the fare I enjoyed as a D.C.-area denizen. It’s a dramatic\u00a0change from 2003 (the year I moved to … Continue reading “No Thai Like The Present: Part 2”<\/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":true,"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-u","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30"}],"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=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dub273.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>From 2003 to around 2009,\u00a0Little Rock had a smattering of restaurants\u00a0hinting\u00a0they served Thai food, with varying degrees of success. My favorite, and the one working the hardest to bring Thai flavors our way, was\u00a0Lilly’s Dim Sum And Then Some<\/a>. While not strictly Thai, Lilly’s winter menu offers\u00a0a zesty, coconutty\u00a0variation of tom kha kai<\/a> soup and a well-balanced\u00a0panang curry<\/a> that a friend of mine declared “the best dish in Little Rock” (I had to agree with him, at the time). Lilly’s is still chugging along, its\u00a0menu in the words of David Byrne “same as it ever was, same as it ever was”. (If it ain’t broke…)<\/em> I loved Lilly’s at the time, but\u00a0due to a combination of daddy-hood and a plethora of other restaurants that have arrived since, I haven’t been in years. Writing about Lilly’s makes me want to go back!<\/p>\nGone, But Mostly Forgotten<\/h3>\n
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