Maybe it’s that the egg rolls are filled with salty, juicy pork and the wrappers aren’t greasy and break in big, crispy shards rather than shattering into tiny bits.
Or maybe it’s the tom kha gai, oily with coconut milk and teeming with straw mushrooms, fresh cilantro leaves floating like little lotus petals in the murky brew.
Or it could be as simple as the fact that the owners are happy you’re there.
At any given Thai restaurant, there’s almost always something to love. But at Stick-e-Rice, you have to wade through a lot of not- so-lovable stuff to find it.
This is one of those places you would like to see do well, since it originated from a business plan for a class assignment done by owner Ton Phairatphiboon at Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. He came up with the eatery’s concept, and when he graduated, he decided to see if he could make a go of it.
But the problems begin at the front door. Now that the weather is nice, the patio gets heavy use. However, this casual, slickly decorated eatery either doesn’t have enough help or the help they do have isn’t working it, because dishes sit outside on the empty tables for a while. Not a very appetizing welcome.
Once inside, first-timers usually need a minute to adjust to the setup, a streamlined design in orange and brown with groovy cube-shaped wall lighting that goes from turquoise to lilac every few seconds.
The ordering line shoots almost down the middle of the place, with a full bar to the right, counter seating in front of the windows, and the main dining room split into two sections.
The room on the left has a handful of comfortable booths and tables with wooden curved-back chairs, while the one on the right offers seating on the floor, with cut-outs beneath the tables so your legs don’t get cramped.
But again, the issue on three visits was finding a space that wasn’t sticky. For a cuisine that involves many sauces, frequent wiping is a must.
Before seating can be procured, however, diners need to navigate the ordering system, which isn’t terribly difficult once you figure out it’s less complicated than it looks.
The menu on the wall is divided into starters, soup bowls, entrée salads and noodles, and then entrees by meat type, including chicken, pork, steak and seafood, along with tofu and vegetables.
It’s also helpful that gluten-free dishes are marked as such, and spicy ones get a symbol, too. And when you order, the cashier will ask for the level of spiciness. By the third stop, though, I figured out that at Stick-e- Rice, mild is so mellow I’d feed it to a baby, medium is about the equivalent of Pace’s picante salsa, and hot is starting to get spicy. If you’re looking for real heat, you need to tell them that you’re serious.
They don’t ask about the sauces, which are made out to be a big deal on the wall menu. Each entree allegedly comes with a sweet- and-sour sauce and then a choice of one more of five sauces. No one will remind you of this, though, and the default sauce is the sour lime and chili one.
The language barrier can be another issue here, and sometimes we had to repeat orders several times or ask for clarification. Then we were given a number, had a few plastic drink cups shoved at us, and told to go sit down.
After we’d wiped off our table of choice on the first visit, it took a full half-hour for the whole group to get its food. More than three people in a row and this place struggles, and nothing ever came out in order. We’d get an entrée, and then maybe an appetizer, and then maybe two more entrees and then a soup.
The kitchen seems to send items out one at a time when they’re ready, with a runner who seems to speak no English, leaving diners to sort out what it is and to whom it belongs.
This is easy when it’s fried spring rolls ($3.25), four to an order, crunchy on the outside and filled with the usual cabbage and carrots, but not possessing much flavor otherwise, and it’s easy when it’s fresh spring rolls ($3.95 with shrimp), three to an order, tightly wrapped and stuffed with vermicelli and crisp cucumber and carrot.
It’s not so easy, however, when the runner brings someone else’s food and points a finger that it’s yours, because you have the number he’s looking for, but you’re pretty sure you paid for grilled steak ($7.95) and not the “tender” steak jerky ($7.95) he’s trying to set down.
The difference turned out to be significant, since the grilled steak was one of the things we loved about Stick-e-Rice, tender strips of Angus Gold that had been marinated in something sweet and salty that caramelized on the meat’s edges over the grill.
The jerky was not so good, because it wasn’t at all tender. It was dry, which you sort of expect for something called jerky, but then why call it “tender,” too?
Also not so good were the fish meatballs ($2.95) that came as three chewy wads on each of three skewers, spongy, fishy and just plain icky. Not much better: the soft- shell crab ($7.95), also fishy-smelling and not tasting at all of the “red curry spice batter” it was supposedly fried in. And garlicky chicken ($6.95 for the boneless chicken breast) came out very dry, while a grilled jumbo calamari steak ($7.95) was a rubbery mess, not a whole steak at all but ribbons of squid that didn’t have any discernible buttery quality and an off flavor that had us pushing the plate away.
In the keeper category were the pad Thai ($4.95 with tofu), not too sweet, moist and evenly balanced with egg, cabbage, green onions and peanuts, and the tom kha soup ($3.50), lighter on coconut milk than usual but to good effect, since there were plenty of straw mushrooms, a light touch with the galangal and the most spicy heat we were able to coax out of the kitchen.
And then there is the matter of that sticky rice, which like the rest of the dishes, arrived on beautiful rectangular white platters. Little embroidered, covered baskets held plastic liners of a gelatinous rice that Phairatphiboon imports from Thailand.
On some visits, the sticky rice was flawlessly sticky, that perfect balance between moist enough to pick up a hefty chunk with chopsticks and plunk it down into some sauce before hoisting it into the mouth, but not so sticky that it was going to remain a lump in the stomach.
But on one stop, the rice was so overcooked it had hardened into a mass that we had to pry out of the baskets with two hands and gnaw down with our teeth.
It might be time to take a look back at that business plan.
Dining critic Kyle Wagner can be reached at 303-820-1958 or kwagner@denverpost.com.
Stick-e-Rice
*
THAI|2070 S. University Blvd., 303-778-0111
Atmosphere: This groovy orange-and-brown eatery is well designed, with a variety of seating options, including booths, floor tables with cutouts to keep your legs from falling asleep, a bar area, a counter in front of the windows and a patio. No softening touches for acoustics make it incredibly noisy, however.
Service: Terrible. Slow, spotty and not being helped by the kitchen. And someone needs to be in charge of regularly cleaning off tables.
Wine list: There’s a full bar with plenty of liquor.
Dinner entrees: $4-$9
Hours: 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily.
Details: All major credit cards; street parking; very noisy; no smoking; wheelchair accessible; no reservations.
Three visits
