The "warm bowl" in the Destination Thailand series at Chopt caught my eye immediately the first time I read the description, mostly because of the spicy green curry turkey meatballs. I love meatballs, and green curry meatballs just sounded like they would be amazing. I was also intrigued by the kelp noodles, an ingredient I had never had before.
The ingredients in the warm bowl were the meatballs (about 3 medium sized meatballs) and kelp noodles, along with pickled hearts of palm, the tatsoi, purple cabbage, and herb mix, toasted coconut garlic crunch, and a recommended dressing of coriander-chile vinaigrette. Unlike the salad, for the warm bowl they just tossed all the ingredients with the dressing (other than the meatballs and the garlic crunch), and there was no chopping of everything together. On the plus side, this helped the flavor of the pickled hearts of palm stand out more, but it also meant that the flavors of all the ingredients weren't as uniformly distributed as they were in the chopped market salad.
The meatballs here were really good. The spice of the green curry came through, and any heat in the bowl was from the meatballs, not the dressing. The kelp noodles reminded me of glass noodles in their appearance, but they were crunchy and a good match for the crisp greens. I liked this bowl a lot, but in the end, I think I liked the market salad better. The flavors there were just a little stronger, and the chopping mixed everything together just a little bit more which I preferred. Glad to be able to try this though, even if it was bittersweet, reminding me of the demise of Shophouse as we loved the meatball bowl there. At least this one will be around for a few more weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment