I just had a birthday, and they took me out for a birthday lunch to beautiful downtown Conshohocken. Our destination was Chiangmai. This is very prototypical of other small thai places. They have a great lunch special, and most of us partook. Instead of the regular lemongrass soup (tom yum), I mixed it up this time, and went with something called jasmine soup. It wasn’t too exciting, but quite palatable. A light chicken broth with some lightly cooked veggies and mushrooms. Very plain.

A few peeps got the thai dumplings as an appetizer. These are deep fried and filled with pork and veggies. It comes with a sweet soy and sesame sauce. These are damn good and meaty. I got the tulip dumplings. It’s basically like shumai, and they are steamed. These were alright. They came with the same sauce as the thai dumplings. I like the thai dumplings better.

D ordered the red curry with beef. He liked it, but said it wasn’t spicy enough. It had two stars of spicy. K ordered sweet and sour chicken. He’d never had thai food before, so this was a completely new experience for him. But he didn’t want to be too experimental, so he went with sweet and sour chicken, always a very safe choice. Overall, he enjoyed his thai food experience. Good for him. He’s expanding his food horizons.

R ordered the thai eggplant with chicken. She loves this dish. And now I know why. Bit hunks of asian eggplant in a brown sauce with slices of chicken breast. Delicious. I went with my old standby, drunken noodles. I always get this, and here, it’s extra good. Nice pieces of chicken breast, fresh and big pieces of noodles, spicy, but not too spicy. You know I love this dish.

Service at Chiangmai is fairly good. It gets very crowded and busy during lunch rush, but the waitresses are very nice and the food comes out quite quickly. The water doesn’t get filled very often, but I won’t hold that against them. It’s also a BYOB. R also got me balloons and brownies for the bday. It was a fun and gluttonous day. Yes, that is a foot on my desk.