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