Recent Article about Krungthai Restaurant

San Jose Mercury News

Krungthai Doubles the Pleasure

By Sheila Himmel / San Jose Mercury News

Like House of Siam in downtown San Jose, where the restaurant's two locations are three blocks away, the city's other powerhouse of Thai cuisine has two locations within walking distance.
Thai custom? No, just coincidence. In both cases, the owners originally intended to close the old location when the new one opened, but the old ones stayed busy.

Winchester Boulevard's newer Krungthai, just past Valley Fair, has been open two years. It's a little more stylish, with bright new Thai linens, and a lot roomier than the one near Moorpark. Owner Prapa Siripakdi fetches fresh flowers from the San Francisco Flower Mart every Wednesday.

Most of the recipes - and business know-how - came to Siripakdi from her parents' restaurant in Thailand. The San Jose Krungthai duet began in a cramped West San Carlos Street storefront 14 years ago, before taking up with Winchester Boulevard. The 134-item menu will never leave you lacking for choices.
Krungthai's hit parade usually starts with a satay ($7.59), marinated chicken, beef or pork grilled on skewers, to dip in spicy peanut sauce and cucumber salad.

Tom kha gai ($6.59 for a small bowl that easily feeds three) is the restorative Thai chicken soup. Spicy stock, smoothed with coconut milk, is studded with lemongrass, green onions and tender pieces of chicken.

Pad Thai ($4.59), a panfried rice noodle Cliche in many Thai restaurants, is a standard-setter here, with discrete pieces of egg, chicken, shrimp and peanuts, the condimental bean sprouts and red cabbage, and little piles of salt and chile pepper for sprinkling.

Basil chicken ($7.59), the jumbo Seafood Delight ($15.59), and pineapple fried rice ($9.59) are the other must-haves for many people.

At a recent dinner, my table skipped all of the above except the rice, now served in an attractive dish rather than a scooped-out pineapple. Sweet and rich but not at all greasy, it's full of hot pieces of pineapple, raisins, corn kernels, carrots, chicken, peas and cashews. A couple of sweet prawns join in. A dissenter at my table found it cloying.

As an appetizer, "Angel Wings" ($7.59) takes the shape of deep-fried, boneless chicken wings stuffed with ground chicken and shrimp, and "silver" bean-thread noodles. Dip the crisp-hot slices in plum sauce.
Those willing to venture beyond the greatest hits might try Som Tum, shredded green papaya ($6.59), a bracing summer salad with chile and lime juice. You are invited to indicate spiciness on dishes marked with a pepper, like this one. Mild will be plenty hot for most diners.

Also carrying off a depth of zing was the ginger chicken with cloud-ear mushrooms ($7.59), though the mushrooms were tepid. Prawns with Thai spicy chile paste ($12.59) were juicy. Calamari in green curry ($11.59) were plump with a stuffing of ground pork, simmered in hot green curry sauce tempered by coconut milk. Terrific Thai eggplants nestled alongside.

The seasonal stir-fried watercress ($7.59) with garlic and a few green beans, also is a treat with its peppery snap.

But our deep-fried catfish ($8.59) sank in a soggy cardboard texture. Another problem was that everything came at once. At lunch, speed is a necessity, but at dinner, a little pacing would help.

Desserts made up for that. Warm mango sounds terrible, but when it's perfectly ripe and resting on sweet rice, it's like frosting ($5.95). Also terrific, fresh-fried bananas with ice cream ($3.95).

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