Things started looking up moments after we sat down for an early dinner in the small, holiday-festive dining room of Khow Thai Cafe in Boulder.
It was frigid outside. A waitress delivered hot cups of soup to us, free. Mushrooms floated in the clear, lemongrass-perfumed, vegetarian broth. It warmed all of us – my wife, Annie, and my two young daughters – instantly.
You’ve probably passed this moss-green place, at the bottom of a hill on Broadway Street in the heart of the University of Colorado’s student swarm.
Khow Thai Cafe, which routinely wins awards for best Thai restaurant in Boulder County, is excellent.
We lean toward stir-fried rice dishes for the girls when we eat Asian. We went with Khow pad supparod, stir-
fried rice with pineapple, raisins, cashews and egg. The dish was clean and clear – not drenched in soy sauce and sesame oil but speckled with cilantro and touched with ginger. The girls gorged on it. So did Annie and I.
The words “pad Thai” rarely fail to pass my lips after sitting down at a Thai restaurant, even though it’s a profoundly hit-or-miss affair. It’s probably the most popular Thai dish in America, and I’ve found restaurants either dumb it down with sugar for their American diners, or they make music with the entree.
Khow Thai Cafe’s orchestra of noodles, egg, bean sprouts, ground peanuts, fish sauce, and seafood (shrimp, scallops, catfish and imitation crab) made wonderful harmonies, dabbed with sweet but not cloying, singed with heat but not volcanic, and nudged with sour lime and fermented fish sauce.
The waitress was extremely helpful, helping us navigate the restaurant’s six styles of curry. We decided upon the Masaman curry, which involved coconut milk, potatoes, onions and peanuts with a mild jolt of chile. We spooned the soupy curry over white rice and ate, barely pausing to make small talk.
Our last dish was the most unusual. If you like lemon, and we do, then it’s worth ordering. Pad prik khing was red and green bell peppers and green beans stir-fried with lemon leaf and a spicy curry paste.
The lemon leaf dominated the sauce, and it almost verged on something infused with Pledge, the lemon-scented furniture polish. But fortunately it held back enough to remain in the food category.
With the cooks busy chopping and frying in the open kitchen, a bunch of graduate students talking about their classes, and the happy hippy music filling the air (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; Tracy Chapman; etc.), Annie sat back and studied the table full of plates.
“I was trying to find a favorite,” she said, “but I couldn’t.”
“Me neither,” I said. “We’re coming back.”
“No doubt.”
Staff Writer Douglas Brown can be reached at 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com.
Khow Thai Cafe
Thai|1600 Broadway, Boulder, 303-447-0273|$3.50-$12.25|Lunch, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner, Monday-Friday, 5-10 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 4-10 p.m.; MC, Visa; parking.
Front burner: Snappy service, enormous portions, authentic Thai flavors.
Back burner: Cramped space; no booths.
