Lotus Thai

This blog is going to be dedicated to the whole range of dining experiences from me, my wife our family and friends. I will review restaurants we have visited, dishes we have cooked and offer up tips and advice to all you budding gourmands out there!

So yesterday my wife gets a phone call around 3pm from one of ou neigbors- her husband had just been promoted and they wanted us to go out and celebrate with them. Usually we don't eat out during the week- however it seemed churlish to refuse. And so out we went to Lotus Thai- located in Hillcrest. We had previously visited 2 of San Diego's Thai restarants- Bai Yuk and Amarin Thai.

Of course coming from Seattle we are a little spoiled when it comes to Thai Food- and although we expected the mexican food to be great down here, we didn't have too high hopes in the Asian food department. We were however, pleasantly surprised. Bai Yuk is a great place to get take out- the dining in experience looks rather sqaushed and to be avoided, however the food is very fresh and delicious. One caution would be to stick to the regualr options on the mneu. My parents came to visit in Ocotber, and choosing to be adventurous got a sort of poached fish dish, which in my mind souded terrible even just written on the menu, and was in fact awful.

Amarin Thai is also a great place to eat- great outdoor seating, and really excellent food. The chciken Satay with Peanut sauce is especially good. The service is excellent - and they do really great tea to wash down your meal.

So- onto last night at Lotus Thai. We drove up to Hillcrest and surprisingly enough found parking just accross the street from the restaurant. We walked in and I was immediately impressed- the ceiling is absolutely gorgeous and gives such a great oriental feel- there are little fountains and plant life all over- best yet the room is incredibly spacey- unusal for a thai restaurant and guests can enjoy thier dinners without having to listen to the conversations of all those in the vicinity. We decided to get 4 dishes and share them between us. My wife being vegetarain chose a green bean dish with red curry sauce, I chose a chicken peanut curry with spinach and our friends got some Pad Thai and Drunken Noodles. We also got an excellent bottle of Chardonnay to share. The dinner was a huge success- the chicken peanut curry being the highlight- Drunken noodles were very spicey, and very good, Pad Thai was excellent and the green bean dish had the advantage of being not only deliciously fresh, but also very healthy.
Service was very attentive but not overbearing- overall a huge success. I thikn Lotus Thai has one the prize of being the best Thai restaurant we have visited so far, and would certainly be a great place to take guests in the future.

Over dinner we discussed the quality of restaurants in San Diego- we were all agreed in our praise, especially those ones in Hillcrest. We started to make a list for our next nights out;

The Linkery
MedGrill (on university)
The Prado
Kemo Sabe
Kensington Grill
Spread

To name but a few- watch our for reviews in the near future!

In the meantime I will stay in with my wife and cook, and work on my dream of Restaurant Management . I'd love to own my own restarant some day- it would be called "Gaia"- I'll explain more in a future post.