Lotus of Siam

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"The single best Thai restaurant in North America"
- Jonathan Gold, Gourmet Magazine


The best Thai Restaurant in the U.S.? Really? In Vegas, in a sketchy plaza? Sometimes, you just never know where you'll find gold (no pun intended) if you don't look in unexpected places...or in my case, yelp.com.

This was my second time going to Lotus of Siam, though I've been to Vegas many times in between (I just can't always make it out here, though now I will try to since everything inside the hotels are majorly expensive and I have no more income). We chose Lotus of Siam for its quality, taste, inexpensiveness, and cuz we wanted to try dishes we didn't try the first time.

When we first went, we had pad see euw and this crispy rice salad:

I tried looking for this crispy rice salad after having it here for the first time but all the other restaurants make it a little different. I think this is my favorite version. There is more of an acidic kick to it.

These are the issan sausages which were great and crunchy on the outside and soft in the inside. I learned that you have to eat these with the peanuts and the cabbage and the other garnishes to get the flavors and textures of all the different elements. I think I like the sausages at Ord Noodles (Thai Town, LA) better though. It was more lime-y.


We ordered some pad thai as a basis of comparison. My favorite pad thai was at Red Corner Asia (Thai town, LA) because they cover the top with fried egg and sprouts, which I love. It's also not as sweet and tangy. I think I don't like pad thai too much because most restaurants make it too tangy and sweet. blech.

What is this? I do not know the proper name. I just know that it is the # 58 (spicy beef on cabbage). We asked for it extra spicy and thought we were going to die. just the way we like it.

We got the northern thai red curry. The curry is not the thick coconut based kind. It's more like a light soup with curry flavors. Very delicious and not heavy at all.

We asked the servers what to get and got what they recommended. After we ate, we realized we should have taken heed to one of their suggestions to get lobster. darn... it looked so good, teasing us from another table.

Maybe next time...

Lotus of Siam on Urbanspoon

Comments

Nate @ House of Annie said…
"Best Thai restaurant in America"? That's a pretty bold statement, even coming from Jonathan Gold. Does he even know what real Thai food taste like?

The beef salad is the bomb!

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January 21, 2009 at 12:06 PM
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