Sticky Rice: Reignite Your Passion for Thai
ByThai food just isn’t that what it used to be. It’s less Bangkok than Oak Park. Everywhere you go it’s the same. The menu has the customary chromatic triumvirate of yellow, green, and red curry, along with the peanutty Massaman curry and the creamier Panang. There’s also a smattering of stir-fry and various rice noodle dishes with two to three syllable names all starting in “Pad” and offered with chicken, beef, or tofu. Occasionally they’ll spice things up with a menu item starting in “Larb.” The walls are decorated with images of dancing golden people, some with too many arms, and waitresses offer efficient, but impersonal service. A vegan or two will sit in the corner, appreciative of the respite from the ugly animal product infested restaurant scene.
Don’t get me wrong. Some Thai restaurants are definitely superior to others, but they are still variations on a theme. I’ll invariably sit down in one of these restaurants and order without looking at the menu. When the curry arrives, its deeply familiar flavor brings me comfort but no joy. I eat as a somnambulist walks, without awareness or direction. I chew and swallow as my mind drifts to a pile of laundry at home.
Thankfully, not every Thai restaurant is derived from the same curry paste. Last week, I had a meal at Sticky Rice, and it resuscitated my passion for Thai food. Located on a busy stretch of Western Ave., it initially felt the same as every other South East Asian restaurant I had visited. Brightly lit walls were garnished with yellow paint and tropical vegetation. It wasn’t until I cracked open the colossal menu that my heart started fluttering. As I scanned it, I felt the excitement and apprehension of a traveller stepping off the airplane in Bangkok for the first time. Items like stingray, intestine, pork blood, and ant eggs mingled alongside more mundane meats. Every item looked unfamiliar and alluring. Sticky Rice, as it turns out, specializes in Northern Thai food. You can get your Pad Thai or Red Curry if you want, but that would be like ordering a ham sandwich at a sushi bar. Don’t be that guy. Just flip straight to the “Northern Thai” section of the menu.
I had heard the service was slow, but that wasn’t my experience. The first item to arrive was the Northern Thai Sausage: pork infused with curry and other Thai spices. It was a pungent and spicy start to dinner, but nothing terribly unusual. A few minutes later, things took an interesting turn. The Khai Jiaw Khai Mod looked rather innocuous when it arrived but its four syllable name put me on guard even before I had read the description. It looked like an omelet with some red dipping sauce on the side. And yet, when you took a bite it was as if someone had translated bubble tea into an omelet. Each bite of egg contained small globs of discrete texture. These globs were not tapioca. They were ant eggs. In essence, it’s an inter-species egg omelet. The truth is, the ant eggs are surprisingly tasteless, offering an unusual texture rather than an unusual flavor.
Up next was the Gang Som Toon, a catfish soup with toon root, whatever that is. Fortunately, descriptions only matter when food is not delicious. The soup was aromatic, sour, and spicy. It tasted similar to Tom Yum Soup, but felt zestier, and the cat fish mixed well with it. I know that spicy foods tend to originate in hot places, but I could really sit down with a bowl of this stuff in the midst of winter. The final dish was the Gang Hung Lay featuring pork and garlic cooked in curry. It was definitely the best dish of the meal. The chunks of meat dissolved in my mouth leaving behind the pleasant aroma of star anise. If anything, it tasted more like a dish from an authentic Chinese restaurant, but with a bit more of a kick.
In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed my culinary journey to Northern Thailand. Slightly smaller dishes mean that I could sample three dishes between two people. I got out of there spending about $15 a person, more expensive than South East Asia, but extremely reasonable for the U.S. Most importantly, though, for a couple of hours, I felt like I had left Chicago for an adventure in Chiang Mai.
Address: 4018 N. Western Ave
Tel: 773-588-0133
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