Siri Thai

A while back, Wondee Siam III (which was one of my favorite places to get larb gai) closed and a new Thai place called Siri Thai took its place. We weren't sure if they were the same people who had just disassociated from the Wondee name, or if it was a totally different operation, and since we've ordered significantly less delivery ever since I started cooking more, we didn't really have a chance to test that out until this week.

We started out with the curry puffs ($4 for 3 puffs), which had minced chicken, potatoes, onions, and curry powder wrapped up in puff pastry. It came with a small cup of "cucumber sauce" on the side which was basically some cut up cucumber, sliced red onion, and shredded carrot. The salad wasn't anything special, but the curry puffs here were pretty good. They had a good curry flavor and a flaky pastry shell. Although they probably weren't our favorite curry puffs ever, we would probably order these again.

The main reason we picked Siri Thai to order from was because I had been in the mood for larb gai for about a week, and we were curious to see if this would be the same as the old Wondee III larb. The first sign that this larb gai ($7) might be different from the old Wondee version was that ordering it didn't automatically trigger an option for an (included) order of rice on the side. Since I've really come to like eating larb with rice, we added one on the side for $1.50 (which was a good idea anyway since we could also use it for the other dishes we got). The second difference was that the container it came in was a smaller "appetizer" size one and in the past, it was the same size as an entree. You can't really tell the size in the photos, but this is smaller.

Even though the larb didn't taste quite the same as we remembered from the old Wondee III, it was still good. We ordered it medium spicy and it had a nice amount of heat. Larb gai has always been one of my favorite salads, and this was nice, light, refreshing, flavorful, and spicy. At this point, I'm not sure where my favorite larb is since we don't order or go out for Thai food as much as we used to and places change, but this one was pretty good. 

I was also in the mood for some curry, so we went with the yellow curry chicken ($11), which was chicken, bell peppers, potatoes, and onions in yellow curry. The curry here was good but the flavor wasn't as rich with curry flavor as some other yellow curries we've had before, and we love that flavor. It was also a little bit oily. That said, it was still good, especially as leftovers after I let the rice sit in that curry sauce overnight and soak it all up.

A remembered liking the pad thai from Wondee III (we never wrote about it so we can't really confirm if our memories are correct), so we got the pad thai ($10) from Siri to try it out. This was a pretty standard chicken pad thai, but we liked that it wasn't too sweet and that it had a nicely balanced sauce. It was also loaded with plenty of bean sprouts, scallions, and carrots to add some freshness and crispness to all those starchy noodles.

Overall, we were pretty satisfied with our dinner from Siri Thai, even if it wasn't exactly what we remembered from the previous inhabitant of the space. We would check this place out again, maybe for lunch specials, since we love Thai lunch specials!

Siri Thai (delivery), 641 10th Avenue (at 45th Street), Manhattan.