Friday, November 19, 2010

i didn't eat padek

so i finally made it over there: savatdee - the Lao/thai restaurant up in the ravenna neighborhood. (see my previous post, http://eatpadek.blogspot.com/2010/07/savatdee.html) and i was definitely pleased with the options on their Lao menu! i went with my friends erik and laura; see the picture below:



we ordered three dishes. the nem, the koi koung, and the tom khem. (they romanized the Lao words differently - and that's really my only complaint with the place - i feel like people should follow the french romanizations as closely as possible; it's consistent and looks nicer than the thai free-for-all transliterations.) in fact, their menu spelled padek so ugly, (badaik), i couldn't bring myself to order the tam makhoung. i can't believe that padek would taste as good when spelled that way. so sawatdee, when you ever update your menu, let me know if you want my help on this.

using their menu's spellings, we ordered goi goung, toam kaim moo, nhem mou (see the problem here? the moo and mou are the same thing -pork- but spelled two different ways.)

but i did enjoy the food. the nem was very good (eaten with fresh herbs, wrapped in lettuce.) however, the tom khem didn't seem as sweet as what i've had in the past. and i have only had goi when the shrimp is raw, and this was cooked, but i enjoyed the unabashed flavor of the dish: salty sour and spicy. we killed all three dishes, as you can see.

they have khao poun on their menu as well, so i'll be back there really soon to give it a go, and i'll tell you about it. check out their website linked above - i like how the links change to thai script when you go to click on them.

so go try em out. it's nice to have another option for Lao food in the seattle area (the other two restaurants are viengthong and thai palms, both down in the south end.) and people on yelp are loving the place. and one of the reviewers posted a picture of savatdee right off my blog! hahaha.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/savatdee-seattle#query:sawatdee

Thursday, November 11, 2010

an inception vacation


so my december trip is kinda planned, kinda not. but i did get my philippines guide book, (and learned how to spell the name of the country and its people: filipinos), so i think that's the most important thing.

so i am first going to hawaii for 3 days. then to the philippines for a few days before going to thailand. (in the philipphines i will meet up with kone and keo and their kids) - and we'll spend a day or two in thailand before taking a train to Laos. we'll stay there for a week or so before heading back to thailand - then back to the philippines for some touring around there. then i am back to hawaii for a couple days, then back to seattle. (hence the name: inception vacation - because i have to revisit every layer of my vacation (with Laos as the innermost layer) before returning home. sorry if i insulted anyone's intelligence or made my joke "not funny" by explaining this.)

i will keep my blog updated while on my trip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines

Friday, November 05, 2010

far east

far east movement scores 3 points: one for diversity (the members of the group are of korean, chinese, and filipino ancestry), one point for the catchy beat, and one point for the clubs that will surely see their alcohol sales go through the roof over this song:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_East_Movement

p.s. don't drink and drive. or maybe just don't drink.