After waking up from my afternoon nap, I was totally craving pad thai for some odd reason! I wanted to dine on savoury stir fried noodles with a hint of tang. So, I turned to my Wall of Dreams and picked Baan Wasana in Kerrisdale. With a 91% rating on Urbanspoon, I thought that this thai restaurant offered something extraordinary. Well, based on what Joanne and I received, it was more like extra ordinary… so ordinary that it was utterly disappointing.
We kicked off the dinner with skewers of Chicken Satay ($8.75). You can also choose beef or pork. The dish comes with 4 skewers alongside two dipping sauces: Thai Peanut Sauce and some other one that is sweet-sourish.
The fact that the peanut sauce was the tastiest component of the dish really spoke volumes. The chicken simply wasn’t seasoned properly. Since I couldn’t even detect any hint of saltiness or spice, it was safe to say that the chicken was as flavourful as a rubber boot. On the bright side, the chicken wasn’t dry like the desert, but it wasn’t moist like the oasis either.
Next up, Beef Red Curry ($10.25)! This dish really made me wonder how Baan Wasana scored a 91% on Urbanspoon… When I generally think of a curry’s texture, what comes to mind is that it’s either creamy or chunky. This was neither. Instead, it was watery beyond belief! When I scooped up some curry with a spoon, and then let it flow back into the bowl… it sounded like someone was taking a huge whiz. I apologize for the bathroom imagery, but that’s the truth! Still, it tasted better than the chicken skewers. However, while it was decent in flavour, it was tiny in size. The bowl may look huge in the picture… but it’s really not. Because of the quality and quantity of the dish, I thought it was really overpriced. Plus, it didn’t even come with rice! As for the beef, it was dry and didn’t soak up any of the curry flavour. It couldn’t even grab onto any curry because it was so damn watery! By the way, the spoon was hotter in temperature than the curry. ‘Nuff said.
Finally, the most iconic Thai dish ever: Pad Thai ($10.95). We ordered it with prawns, but you can pick chicken or vegetarian as well. Scattered in the stir fried noodles, there’s tofu, egg, ground peanuts and bean sprouts. When the server put down the plate, I was immediately turned off by how massive it was. It looked like the chef just casually slammed a crapload of noodles down onto a plate like Playdoh. Just based on presentation, this dish failed miserably!
The pad thai tasted like the one I made in my high school cooking class for the first time. In a nutshell, it was very one-dimensional in flavour. There was just tanginess on top of more tanginess – no savoury notes or bursts of vibrance. And since there were only four dry and tough prawns swimming in a swamp of noodles, I quickly became sick of eating it.
Final Bytes
- Extremely overpriced for subpar food!
- Service speed was okay, but the servers weren’t particularly enthusiastic.
- I’d honestly rather go to Subway around the corner.
Foodobyte’s Rating
I’ve never been to this restaurant before, so I don’t know how the food is. However, I do have to say that Thai curries are supposed to be thinner than Indian curries. I was surprised when I first ordered curry at a Thai restaurant and saw that it was all thin and watery, but then I realized that it was just the style. However, the curry shouldn’t have been served lukewarm or cold, which sounds very unappetizing, and the pad thai looks awful. I’ve had $4 frozen dinners from Superstore that had more shrimp than the ones I see in your pictures.
Thanks for letting me know! But yeah, there’s definitely better Thai restaurants out there!