Roll Restaurants
Sukhothai
by M.R. Smith
How well I remember my first time experiencing Thai cuisine. Having lived the entire ‘80s and ‘90s in a not-very-internationally-hip Southern city, my wife and I had simply not been exposed to it in any way. When visiting good friends in Manhattan sometime in the mid-80s, our incredulous hosts insisted on exposing us poor little country mice to the wonders of Siam, taking us to a place in the Village called . . . Sukhothai. Fancy that.
The first thing we had was one of those inverted Bundt-pan soup pots full of steaming milk-white soup. Sniffing, poking, then eventually spooning it up, I was instantly transported to a whole different flavor world that I’ve never quite booked a return trip home from. Tom Kha Gai, made from chicken, coconut milk, lemon grass, galangal root, kaffir lime leaves, fish sauce and red chiles (with occasional straw mushrooms and veggies) is one of the world’s most perfectly realized soups—and in years of eating it—it has become my main yardstick by which I personally evaluate any Thai-style restaurant. If it’s done right, then I feel confident I will be a happy camper at meal’s end. If not, well . . . er, check please.
So, having made our counter-intuitive Northern migration, naturally we needed something close by in the Hudson Valley that met our occasional need for Thai. After some hit-and-miss experiences around the area, we finally got to check out Sukhothai in Beacon. The Tom Kha Gai was immediately ordered, four spoonfuls tucked in and savored, and four verdicts pronounced: mmmmm. Got the balance between sweet, salty, sour and spicy right. A good omen.
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