The whole family likes Thai food. Ditto for Japanese cuisine. So when we examined the menu at Siamese Plate on the Go in Boulder, and found two menus – one Thai, one Japanese – we figured we couldn’t go wrong.
Good figuring.
Most of the dishes we tried rose above average. None of them dropped our jaws. Everything was pretty cheap.
Above average.
Cheap.
Good combination.
One of the beauties of the place is the combination buffet line/menu. Hankering for a small serving of the pumpkin-beef curry on the buffet, but also want an order of Prig Khink curry from the menu? No problem. You can get both, and more. Mixing and matching is OK.
Which is exactly what we did, twice, for a lunch and an early dinner.
That pumpkin-beef curry? The Thai flavors of coconut, lime, chile pepper and garlic were pungent. The peanuts and potatoes made it hearty. The thinly sliced beef? A bit dry. I’d still order it again, though.
The fresh spring rolls were as they should be: soft, tender, jammed with rice noodles, veggies, cilantro, egg and tofu.
My wife, Annie, a vegetarian, ordered the ginger curry. Good thing she likes ginger. The dish didn’t skimp with its namesake ingredient, which was a pleasant surprise. Too many times we’ve ordered dishes advertising their ginger, only to find the flavor about as gingery as a rutabaga.
The young daughters like Thai food in part, I think, because it can be a touch sweet. My oldest, though, has become a connoisseur of Thai sweet – dump too much sugar in that pad-thai tangle, and she’ll turn up her nose.
Drunken noodles is also a dish often subject to too-liberal infusions of sugar. We watched as Stella brought a forkful of the fat, sauce- slicked noodles to her mouth.
She flashed us the thumbs up. I gave it a shot, sweet and sour and hit with Thai spices. Mind-blowing? Not by a longshot. Worth about $5? Sure.
On another day, a cold late afternoon, we explored the Japanese menu, which was fortuitous. The place offered sushi in abundance, but we were in the mood for something else. Annie ordered Tofu (Dashi) Udon, a big bowl of soup swimming with vegetables and tofu. The seaweed broth, rice wine, mushrooms and carrots, cabbage and egg were like a crackling hearth in my cold, cold heart.
An item I liked even morewas another winter-hearty dish: the Shrimp Yaki Udon. The thick udon noodles were stir-fried with grilled shrimp and vegetables in a soba sauce with ginger, soy sauce, seaweed broth and a hint of wasabi.
It was all we needed to steel ourselves for the cold.
Staff Writer Douglas Brown can be reached at 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com
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Siamese Plate on the Go
Asian|3033 28th St., Boulder, 303-444-3133|$3.50-$11.45| 11 a.m.-10 p.m., every day; MC, Visa (Amex, too, at Folsom address); parking; Second location, 1575 Folsom St., Boulder, 303-447-9718; Third location, 133 McLaslin Blvd., Louisville, 303-926-7220
Front burner: Above average, affordable Thai and Japanese food and quick service.
Back burner: Not exactly cozy.
