You know, looking at these pictures now, it's a little hard to imagine three months have passed since the time we had our meal of a Thai buffet at Super Thai by Soi Aroy there.
I had been a little surprised when my friend told me of this Thai buffet place at MacPherson, near Aljunied, suggested we go try.
It's not because I didn't fancy Thai cuisine- I love it- but Thai places here in Singapore are not known to offer their dishes in the form of buffet.
If they do, it's always Mookata, nothing less, nothing more.
But this deal was not for the ubiquitous dome moat of a Thai Steamboat-BBQ.
This was a deal for Thai dishes- prepared in the kitchen, cooked by the chef, brought to the table.
That was new.
I can't remember now just what there was available on the menu of Super Thai for us to order, but there was a lot.
Not only was there a huge variety of meat and poultry dishes, there were also the usual favorites of rice and noodles and soup and salad.
It took us a while to look through the entire menu, trying to decide what we wanted. In the end, as it turned out, we ended up ordering our favorites of all the foods we love.
There are a couple of dishes I didn't get to take a picture of.
There are also those pictures that didn't turn out very well.
Either it were that we were too hungry, and so I didn't pay attention, or I were just too busy working through the dishes that they brought out all at the same time.
There aren't a lot of them here, but if there's one thing you must know about me, it is that I am a fan of Thai cuisine.
So I might not take as much som tum as locals say I ought to, and between a Pad Krapow and a Pad Thai, I prefer the Pad Thai, but I love the flavors that Thai food brings, especially those that make the perfect balance between sweet, sour, salty with just the hint of spice.
We got a fair bit of them flavors here.
Not just in the bowl of Green Curry Beef that was the second batch of dishes to arrive, but also in the Crab Omelet, the Soft Shell Crab Fried Rice and the pork chop that was our last dish and came so neatly sliced I found it easy to eat with chopsticks.
One of the best dishes this afternoon was the Soft Shell Crab Fried Rice.
So the picture- fourth one from the top after the steamed fish- doesn't look like there is a soft shell crab on top of the heap- I too had expected it to come looking like a full sized crab aka Japanese style- but it had all been chopped up, it was a most fantastic portion, it was crispy, crunchy, and full of flavor.
Sure, the crab did look more like them dried chilis from Sichuan Mala La Zi Ji, but every little red piece was so savory, crunchy and tasty that it was a hard decision to make whether to eat it together with the fried rice, or just plain on its own.
In the end, I alternated, and so my own plate had not just spoonfuls of the fried rice with the soft shell crab, it also had the fried tang hoon laden with the same crab.
Just these three dishes alone made for a very interesting meal.
Hardly is it that I get to have both tang hoon and fried rice together- at most places I order either one of the other- but because today I could, I not only got to have strands of tang hoon with omelet egg, I got to mix it with crab as well.
Then the fried rice- lightly sweet with cute little cubes of pineapple inside- I didn't just eat it with the crab, I mushed up the omelet with the rice as well, and can I say that pineapple and omelet egg actually do go quite well together as well?
All three dishes made for a more savory palate than a sweet but I liked it.
I liked the warmth that came with the tang hoon- this is my second favorite after the Pad Thai- and for some reason I always find this one of the most fun foods to eat.
I also liked how the omelet egg gave this extra oomph of its own eggy taste with everything else.
If Thai foods combine the sweet, savory, sour and spicy, today's sour came in the form of the steamed fish, and the spice, in the form of the green curry.
The steamed fish today definitely had the sour- we had asked that it be cooked in lime- so, yes, you can imagine just how palate opening and appetizing the fish was.
It might have had a different taste if the fish were fried, but this one was not only sliced half and deboned, it was steamed, and so in every mouthful we got the smooth texture of the fish measured with the pleasant, (surprisingly) refreshing sauce of the lime.
I can't remember whether I ate the fish with the rice or the tang hoon.
Definitely though I know I had a big spoon of it every time I scooped it onto the plate, and I know I tried munching it with the beef of the green curry from time to time.
Not just that, after a while the sauce became a sort of drink for me.
Especially when it came to the nice crispy siew yok (Thai style) and the pork chop. Maybe I was feeling the effects of all the food I were having at that time, so whilst the siew yok had plenty of crunchy bits on top- one huge mountain of it- all of which I really loved- I was starting to feel a tad thirsty.
Yet, I didn't feel like having anything iced or sweet, so sour it was, for me.
It was pretty fun having the beef and the pork chop together with the crunchy bits (I wish I knew what they were) and because we were getting full, it actually made you feel like you weren't needing to finish three separate dishes, but three combined into one.
Perhaps next time we might buffer the palate for a couple of drinks when we're there- Thai iced tea and Thai lemongrass are top choices for me always, and maybe- just maybe- I wonder if they have some sort of a dessert somewhere on the buffet menu.
If there were, I didn't quite get to see.