Sawasdee Thai Restaurant

**Wrote this review a while ago, but S hadn't given me photos from the evening until now... I really enjoyed this place, it's been voted the best Thai place in Indy's Best of the Triangle, and it has awesome reviews on Yelp, so if you're nearby, give it a try!

Also, sorry for the blurry images. 1- They're taken with a phone camera because I forgot my camera, and 2- It was really dark inside...

A while ago, S and I went to Crabtree Valley Mall, and on the way back, we decided to go to Sawasdee for dinner. I have heard about this place for a while now and have wanted to try it, so we went to their new location on Glenwood. It's a pretty well-hidden, dimly-lit place, but don't be deceived by appearances...

We didn't know what to order, so we asked our waitress for suggestions. Upon hearing that we liked spicy food, she immediately pointed out two items: Pad Prik Kra Paw, which is a stir fry with bell peppers, basil, chili, garlic, and onions, served with rice, and Drunken Noodles Chicken (Pad Kee Maw), which is spicy rice noodles, stir-fried in chili sauce with egg and basil leaves. We ordered one of each, as well as a calamari appetizer (too hungry...)

The calamari appetizer was decent (although small), reminded us of Twisted Noodle's fried tofu actually - I think it was the batter.

Calamari with sweet-sour sauce

The Pad Prik Kra Paw (with pork) was super spicy! We ordered both of our dishes to be two stars (out of three) on the spicyness scale, and I consider myself to be quite spicy tolerant, but wow, that was some dish. Other than that, the pork was cooked pretty well, and there was a lot of other flavors.

Pad Prik Kra Paw with pork

The drunken noodles were really, really good. It was also a very spicy dish, and you could tell that the spicyness was blended in beautifully with all the other flavors to create a really nice aroma. Unfortunately, towards the end it got a little too oily for me, but I still finished everything (yes, the entire entire plate!) because it tasted so good. Yup, that's how great it was.

Drunken Noodles Chicken (Pad Kee Maw)

Aaaaand because we loved everything so much, we decided to order dessert! (Funny how when you've eaten a lot of good food, you want to eat more...) We were instantly attracted to one thing on the menu: kanom tuay (sweet coconut pudding). It was served warm in four small cups on a long tray - an elegant presentation. The pudding's consistency was not as soft as custard or jelly, but not as sticky as sticky rice. The coconut flavor was strong but not overwhelming. Overall, it was a great combination of texture and taste. Both of us enjoyed it very much, and we left the restaurant very satisfied.

Sweet coconut pudding (Kanom tuay)

If you can't tell already, I absolutely adored this place. No wonder it's voted one of the best Thai restaurants around here and has such good restaurant reviews. I really want to go to the Capital Blvd location now and see if the food is consistent... or you can try it and let me know how was your visit. I hope it was as enjoyable as mine!

Restaurant: Sawasdee
Price Range: (dinner): $15-25

Korean Grill Buffet

So it was my birthday a couple of weekends ago, and my friends and I went to a Korean barbecue in Raleigh, Korean Grill Buffet, to celebrate! My roomie has heard some pretty good things about this place. It's an all-you-can-eat grill, which of course gets all the guys really excited. The pricing is decent, so I was looking forward to it.

If you don't know how Korean bbq works, basically you have a grill at your table and cook the meat at your own table. Some of the meat has been marinated already, and there is sauce available for the others. I usually make a lettuce wrap with a couple of pieces of grilled beef or pork, a small amount of rice, and tiny bit of Korean chili paste, and I eat the entire wrap in one bite.

The restaurant is medium-sized with a buffet in the middle and grill tables on the sides. We had a rather large party so we took up an entire 8-person table with two grills, but if your group is smaller you'll be pretty close to your neighboring party. The interior was overall a little too dimly lit for my liking, but the individual tables had more lighting from the overhead exhaust fan set-up.

The buffet had the meat assortment at the start: chicken thighs (both marinated and unmarinated), marinated pork belly, marinated pork/ bulgolgi, and unmarinated beef. Moving on there was lettuce, different sauces and kimchi dishes, cold noodles, seaweed salad, etc. Finally, at the end of the buffet were some soups and typical Asian-style dishes like kung pao chicken and mapo tofu.

None of us really went for any other of the side dishes and of course all stacked up on the meat (9 Asians, 6 of them guys.. what did you expect?), and began grilling. Our server was helpful and attentive - changed the grilling surface regularly, replaced the shears when we accidentally took them apart, gave us another set of tongs...overall, pretty good service.

As for the grill itself? It was not bad. The marinated meats had way too much flavor, which was expected - the meats were basically sitting in sauce, so they are soaking up the flavor the entire time. The bulgogi is particularly salty - the thin slices are very easily overseasoned. The unseasoned beef slices were much better, and we enjoyed those a lot. The flavoring of the pork belly was good, although it did not hold up well to the grilling because the texture became rubbery very quickly. Finally, the chicken thighs were very tender, especially the unmarinated ones, but they do take a while to cook completely on the grill, so you should be advised to cut them into small pieces for faster cooking time.

Table-center grill, filled with assorted meat, mushrooms, etc. I am attempting to cut the meat pieces smaller & easier to handle.

After I was satiated with meat, I decided to try some of their other offerings. Nothing in particular impressed me, although I was really horrified by their red bean soup, which was salty... I'm beginning to think that this restaurant really has a salt problem. Actually, most of my fellow diners and I believe that they've made a mistake and used salt instead of sugar in the soup. Whatever the case, it was quite bad.

Overall, it was a decent experience. Lunch price is pretty reasonable at just $12.95 per person on weekends. (You can check out their full menu pricing on their website.) I'm not sure I'll be coming back anytime soon, though, partly because of the drive, and partly because I just don't want to smell like grill for the rest of my day.

Restaurant: Korean Grill Buffet
Pricing: (for lunch) $12-15; (for dinner) $17-20