She ate: Pushing the (egg) envelope

The restaurant itself is tiny. About 10 tables are scattered around a flat-screen television, which, after showing Asian music videos on our first visit, was switched to Eric Clapton for the subsequent visits.

Service is provided by a man, who I assume is an owner, the husband of the female cook and the father of a baby who is cute enough to be the restaurant’s mascot.

Upon being seated, my boyfriend and I were presented with two menus: A smaller one, with descriptions of each of the 50-plus dishes and their prices, and a larger, bound notebook, which has large photos of each dish. This, in my opinion, is genius. One thing that intimidates me when I go to an ethnic restaurant the first time is my unfamiliarity with the menu. This often leads to me choosing blindly and just pointing to items when giving my order, which makes me feel like an ignorant slob. The photo menu is extremely helpful.

On our first visit, we started with the Thai Papaya Salad Som Tum ($5.55.) The ingredients — slivered green papaya, peanuts, cherry tomatoes, garlic and long beans — were refreshing and cooling on a hot day. A squeeze of lime brightened the dish. The accompanying squid, however, was one of the worst things I have ever put in my mouth, and I have eaten cow brain.

We moved on and ordered Pad Thai with shrimp ($6.99) and fried rice with chicken ($6.55.) Looking for the best Pad Thai in town? Your search ends here. This was the best Pad Thai I’ve had. The mix of rice noodles, bean sprouts, green onions and shrimp was wrapped in an envelope made of eggs and tossed in a peanut sauce. I could wax poetic about this dish for the rest of my space, but suffice it to say that we ordered it on each of our three visits.

The fried rice was also fresh, well prepared and chock full of onion, carrot, parsley, long beans and sizeable pieces of white chicken meat. The two fried eggs atop were poked with the tines of my fork to let the yolk spread over the rice and chicken. Stay out of the mall — get your fried rice here. Panda Express doesn’t have any soul in their food anyway.

The boyfriend ordered a watermelon crush smoothie ($2.99) and was presented with a beer stein full of blended watermelon, lime juice, and honey. I died for it. Always a good sport, he stuck to his bottle of Ice Mountain (yes, when you ask for water you’re buying a bottle of it for $1) and let me devour the smoothie. The watermelon theme continued to the end of our meal, when the waiter, baby on hip, brought us a plate of watermelon slices. We slurped and wondered if this little dessert will change with the season — apples in October, citrus in January? I hope so. How charming.

On our second visit we started with an order of spring rolls ($3.99.) Six deep-fried rolls, thinner than egg rolls, are stuffed with carrot, onion, chicken or pork and thin noodles with a sweet chili dipping sauce. The spring rolls are heavenly, crunchy and piping hot. We got them again on visit number three and will order them to infinity and beyond.

I had the fried rice stick ($5.55): Thick noodles with carrots, spinach, mushrooms, what I think was shaved asparagus, chicken and bean sprouts. This was not unlike the Pad Thai, but the noodles are thicker, the vegetables are different and there is no peanut sauce or egg envelope. For those reasons, I preferred the Pad Thai. My date had the fried rice vermicelli ($5.55) with angel hair noodles tossed with bean sprouts, onion, carrot, asparagus and chicken. Again, same theme, different noodles.

On our third visit, since it was one of those 70 degree August days (hat tip to the Polar Vortex) I decided to try a soup. The Su Kee ($6.99) is more of a stew, with chicken, shrimp, squid, egg, noodles, watercress, beans and fennel seeds in a huge steaming bowl of slightly spicy tomato-based broth. My loyalty to the pho at Asia’s Finest was shaken. I wanted to dive in and do the backstroke in this soup. Alas, the bowl was too small, and I didn’t want to provide the setup to a bad joke. (“Waiter, there’s a food critic in my soup!”)

I couldn’t resist the Wonderfully Diuretic Specially for Women smoothie ($2.99) made with watermelon, cucumber and honey. It was served, oddly, at room temperature. It didn’t make me feel like more of a woman, but the taste of cucumber was strong and refreshing.

The boyfriend commented that they should move downtown into the space recently vacated by New York Burrito. They wouldn’t be able to handle the crowd, I said. Two adults and a baby work here.

Now excuse me, if you need me I’ll be in my kitchen trying to duplicate this restaurant’s egg envelope.