Tuesday, October 19, 2010

My Elephant

Place: My Elephant, Section 17, PJ
Cuisine: Thai
My Rating: 4/5

Although this is my second time patronizing this restaurant, I always seem to get lost as this place is located in the middle of some housing estate. Tucked neatly under the Happy Mansion flats, this place offers great Thai food with a cozy ambiance.

During my first visit, this place didn't really impress me foodwise. Besides the Tod Man Plah (thai fishcake), the dishes that I ordered didn't blow me off the roof. We ordered the famous duck curry that everyone has been raving about. Roast duck, avocado and rambutans were used to cook the curry. Sadly, the taste didn't quite suit my taste buds as duck with fruits in curry didn't seem quite right to me. The tom yam certainly left an impression, albeit a hot one! Feeling adventurous, we opted for the one with the most chilli in the menu. Needless to say, it was too hot for our tolerance. I must mention that I do have a higher than average tolerance for spicy stuff. The soup was burning my tongue and this kind of spoilt my taste buds for the other dishes.

After a lapse of almost half a year, I was craving for Thai food again. This time around, I brought my whole family along, 7 of us in total, so that we can sample a wider variety of choices. I'm glad to say that everyone enjoyed the meal and had positive comments regarding the ambiance. It was almost like fine dining at affordable prices.

We ordered Mieng Kam and Tod Man Plah as appetizers. Mieng Kam is daun kaduk wraps with dried shrimps, lime, onions, coconut crisps and chilli padi. It's a DIY food where you need to spread the sweet sour tamarind plum sauce on the leaf before scooping bits and pieces of the dried shrimps, etc onto the leaf. Wrap it and eat it. I must say the Mieng Kam here is good but the portion is kind of small. The Tod Man Plah didn't fail to deliver again. The thai fish cake is a must-try. It certainly tastes different from our Chinese fish cake.

As I had a bad experience with the Tom Yam previously, I decided to give the Tom Sum a try. It was certainly much better than the Tom Yam. Tom Sum is a clear based soup cooked with lemon grass and other thai herbs. The soup is bursting with flavour and is very appetizing! The waitress recommended the Gai Tod Gratiam Prik Thai. It is actually deep fried chicken strips with kaffir lime leaf, garlic and crushed thai peppercorn. The dish is addictive. The chicken strips are juicy and tender and the taste is just so different from other fried chicken that I have tasted. We also had green curry chicken that night. The curry is nice as it wasn't too salty and tasted quite authentic to me. For fish, we had the Plah Nung Manow which is actually steamed fish with lime, garlic and chilli dressing. The fish is nicely decorated with lime and strips of mango. The fish texture was very good and the lime and chilli based clear gravy blended well with the fish.

All of us ordered either Pandan Cooler or Krachiap Cooler for drinks. The pandan cooler is actually pandan water and the krachiap is actually thai roselle. It was a very nice combination with the food as the drinks were cooling and not too sweet. Everyone was happy with the dinner and I'm glad to say that the food in My Elephant is splendid enough for me to care to blog about. :)

***Pics will be uploaded later***