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Restaurant Review: A palace of flavour

Thai food always makes me reminisce about my youth in Toronto. The very first Thai restaurant in Canada opened in the Big Smoke in 1980 and a decade later it seemed just about everywhere had some Thai dishes on their menu.
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The My Thai Platter served at My Thai Palace was a captivating array of treats attractively garnished with julienned carrot and cucumber, and served with a tantalizing peanut sauce for the satays and a sweet dip for the salad rolls. It tasted as good as it looked. Photo by Al McMullan.
Thai food always makes me reminisce about my youth in Toronto. The very first Thai restaurant in Canada opened in the Big Smoke in 1980 and a decade later it seemed just about everywhere had some Thai dishes on their menu.

So I dine at My Thai with some knowledge of the cuisine and fond memories of meals past.

For this culinary excursion, I brought a group. Our reservations were for a little later in the evening so when we arrived the dining room was sparsely occupied and we were greeted by a hostess attired all in black, matching the other servers in the room.

The dining room was warmly decorated with a tranquil water fountain stationed at the front door and decorative abstract artwork on the walls.

My wife and I decided to share the My Thai Platter appetizer, which includes chicken satay, salad rolls, fried wonton and fried calamari. It was a captivating array of treats attractively garnished with julienned carrot and cucumber, and served with a tantalizing peanut sauce for the satays and a sweet dip for the salad rolls. It tasted as good as it looked.

For a main course, I ordered the Eggplant Delight, a stir fry of peppers onions and eggplant, fresh basil and tofu, one of many vegetarian dishes on the menu.

A friend ordered seafood fried rice with shrimps, scallops, crab stick and calamari stir-fried with egg, onion and shrimp paste, which he said was delicious.

My sister in law ordered Green Curry (Kang Kheaw Wan) with bamboo shoots, sweet basil leaves, broccoli and bell peppers in coconut milk, served with chicken in a spicy and flavourful broth.

Someone had told me that their banana fritters with ice cream were "to die for."

Unfortunately, none of us could eat another bite, so we settled for tea and coffee, and I was pleasantly surprised to get my tea in a nice ceramic pot fashioned in the shape of an elephant — which poured without slopping like the standard metal ones do, by the way.

It's a small thing, but it illustrates My Thai's attention to detail. Now, I can enjoy the taste Thai food without having to drive four hours to Toronto.

A former chef, Al McMullan is a graphic designer with Laurentian Publishing.

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