Wild Thai
Monday, December 3rd, 2007
First off, apologies for the spotty weekend reporting. My Internet connection took a dive, so we all suffered with that one. How else can I get my news, other than my computer?!?
Anyway, in the midst of our minor sprinkles that were guaranteed to not be enough to alleviate the fire threat (har har — now we have flood warnings galore!), I met up with an old friend and had lunch with her at the Wild Thai Restaurant in the Howard Hughes Promenade. While I’d stared at the freeway-adjacent building many times while stuck in traffic, always thisclose to my exit in beautiful Culver City, I’ve never actually been there. It had the usual shops that you’d expect in the outdoor mall type establishments: a bookstore by way of Borders, some clothes shops like Nordstrom Rack, and lots of specialty foods. I haven’t had Thai in a long time, since my favourite San Francisco Thai restaurant closed suddenly and I had no other Thai fried rice supplier that I trusted.
I decided to break my hunger strike that day and we gave Wild Thai a try. I also decided to suck it up and give their Thai fried rice a go, with tofu, since I am a vegetarian. Not a very good one, since I do fish and eggs occasionally, but still somewhat of a veg. I liked it! My only wish is that they’d included a lime wedge, because fried rice with some fresh squeezed lime juice is divine. Try it, I guarantee you’ll like it. The Thai iced tea was fabulous as well, a little on the sweet side, but I like it that way. That stuff was made to instantly take away all lingering spiciness in your mouth and make you feel sugary and happy. My friend got a shrimp combo plate — the name eludes me, since it was on the specialty menu and not the regular menu — and ate it all happily. I personally liked the little bags o’ shrimp, whatever they’re really called.
My only regret? Not trying the mangoes and sticky rice. Quite possibly my favourite dessert (okay, maybe tied with Kheer, Indian rice pudding), I love to try this wherever I go to see how their mangoes stack up to my beloved and extinct Thai Nation, since they were discerning enough to only serve that dessert when mangoes were naturally in season, and refused to use hothouse fruit.
All in all I would definitely visit Wild Thai again if I was in the neighborhood. I saw they also had a vegetable yellow curry, my other favourite Thai dish, and I’d like to give that a try. Maybe then I could get around to the sticky rice and mangoes. 
If you’re ever in the area you should try it, too. According to the Yelp reviews you can actually make any dish vegetarian, which is a nice touch most places don’t think to do.
Now there’s an event being held by the Southern California Restaurant Historical Society in which they will celebrate restaurants both past and present. By commemorating restaurants still open, they also keep the memory alive of former places that no longer exist. At 10:00A.M. on May 26th, the event is going to be held at Clifton’s Brookdale Cafeteria. The cost is completely free to attend, with the motto of “Pay What you Wish, Dine Free Unless Delighted”.
The Old Spaghetti Factory has many locations around the United States. The original restaurant opened it’s doors in Portland Oregon on January 10th of 1969. Sales for the first night were considered a “complete bust” at $171.80, but the Old Spaghetti Factory only got better from there on. Within the week, the store was making $900 a night, and by the end of the year, had reached $400,000. By 1970, owner Guss Dussin started two more restaurants with the same name, and today, The Old Spaghetti Factory has become an international restaurant that serves over 10 million customers a year.
