Summer Rolling Noodles

One of our favorite Thai restaurants in the Hell's Kitchen / Midtown West / Theater District area is Qi Bangkok, which has an extensive menu including special dishes designed by Pichet Ong.  A has previously written about the great and affordable lunch special (which, although still a good deal, no longer appears to come with free spring rolls and soup in addition to the appetizer), but we haven't gotten around to writing about any of the other dishes.  Tonight I ordered some delivery at work from Qi and decided to order only dishes we hadn't tried before.

I started off with the fresh basil summer roll with shrimp ($5.90).

In addition to shrimp, the rice paper wrapper was filled with julienne carrots, celery, cucumbers, lettuce, red onions and basil, and it was served with a tamarind hoisin sauce.

I've always been a big fan of summer rolls.  They're refreshing and healthy (much healthier than spring rolls!).  Qi's summer roll is really good.  The vegetables are fresh and crisp, the roll did not fall apart or melt into my fingers, the wrapper wasn't too sticky, and it was wrapped well with all the ingredients evenly spaced throughout.  I would recommend this.

For my entree, I got the rolling noodles ($10.90).  We have tried a lot of the noodle dishes at Qi (including the awesome Qi Pad Thai which has vermicelli wrapped into an egg white crepe) but the rolling noodles were new to me.  

At the restaurant everything probably comes mixed together but I appreciated that for delivery they packed the noodles and bean sprouts separate from everything else, keeping it from being a big soggy mess.  The "everything else" was minced chicken with shiitake mushrooms, brown tofu, scallions and cilantro in a soy-based sauce.

I poured the chicken mixture on top of the noodles and bean sprouts for a very tasty dish.  I probably shouldn't have poured it on with all of the sauce because that did make it a little too salty.  Lesson learned.

I really liked this dish.  I like minced chicken dishes in general, especially at Thai restaurants (have I mentioned my love for larb gai before?), and in this dish, the minced chicken soaked up the flavor of the sauce and the mushrooms really well.  It was just a really good combination and different from what is usually available at Thai restaurants.

To finish off my order, I got a drink - cranberry juice ($3) - which arrived in a plastic soup container.

If you've ever wanted to know what $3 of cranberry juice looks like, there you go.  Seems a little pricey to me.  It was also a bit odd trying to drink cranberry juice through a straw from a plastic soup container.

If you're in the area and looking for Thai food (of which there is no shortage in Hell's Kitchen), we would recommend Qi.  They have a lot of unique options (and a great lunch special) and really good desserts (which we don't always remember to save room for).  I'm not a huge dessert fan but I was sad to see that they don't deliver dessert.  Let us know if you have any Qi favorites - we would love to try more things!

Qi Bangkok is located at 43rd and 8th.