Pure Thai Shophouse

Today we went for lunch at Pure Thai Shophouse after watching the early showing of the fantastic Harry Potter movie. We had thought about trying this place when it first opened about a month ago, but then we saw a table at the empanada place across the street. We hadn't been there in so long because it's so hard to get seats there, so we put off Pure Thai until another day.


It's a really small restaurant but they make the most of the space. There's several small tables and also a counter against the wall with stools. Since the chairs have no backs, there's also coat hooks all around the restaurant.


They also have cute bottles for their "pure" tap water, which can you see on the table here:


The first thing we noticed about the menu at Pure Thai is that for lunch it's really well-priced. The appetizers were $2 or $2.50 and the entrees were under $10. The portion size isn't huge either so you can get a mix of things for a pretty good price. (Everything is more expensive for dinner by about $3-4.)

We started out with two appetizers - curry puffs and spring rolls:


The curry puffs were filled with caramelized chicken, onion and sweet potato, and accompanied by the usual cucumber relish. This was definitely the better of the 2 appetizers. We almost always try curry puffs when we try a new Thai place and this was one of the better ones. The curry flavor was great and the puffs were light and flaky.

The vegetable spring rolls had shiitake mushrooms, jicama and glass noodles inside the fried shell, and a Thai chili plum sauce accompaniment. The filling was better than some of the other spring rolls we've had, but the curry puffs were much more delicious.

For entrees, we focused on the "Pure Thai Noodles" section since this contained some of the dishes unlikely to be found on other menus. A got the Sukhothai Pork Noodle Soup (thin rice noodle, roasted pork, long bean, bean sprouts, peanut, dried shrimp and pork broth):


This was SO good. It is similar to something A used to get at another Thai place down the street but has Chinese-style roast pork instead and the broth is different. It's perfect for the cold weather - warms you up from the inside. The broth and seasonings were excellent. And M loved the color of this dish.

While both noodles were good, this was probably the better of the 2. M got the Krabi seafood noodles (as dry noodles instead of as a soup). They were flat rice noodles with shrimp, calamari, tofu, water spinach, bean curd, cooked in a tomato pork broth:


Under all that, the noodles were a very uncommon pink color:


The flavor was great and M hadn't had anything like it before. Having had this as a dry noodle instead, she wondered if it would have been even better in soup (as it's listed on the menu).

We also got dessert:


There was only one option on the menu - yam custard with sticky rice. We love sticky rice (especially with mango) and finally figured out that the "Thai custard" that other places put on it is yam custard. This was better than the other ones we've had:


If you notice, we have said most things here were better than other Thai food we've had in the area (although each place has its strengths). It probably goes without saying that we will be returning for more!