Ho Yummy

Tricia, Victoria, and I met up one evening and decided to go to Chili Garden for dinner. Tricia had heard about this place as an up and coming Thai restaurant in the busy Main Street area near King Edward. I always like eating Thai food and am always up for trying new restaurants so this sounded like to perfect place to try out. According to the restaurant description in the menu, Chili Garden’s chef was trained in Thailand and has worked in several restaurants both in Thailand and elsewhere. My expectations were high as I read through the menu to decide what to eat.

The three of us were fairly hungry so we each picked a dish and decided to share so we could get a taste of everything. My pick was the sambal green beans with prawns. I wasn’t being super original with my choice but sambal green beans are one of my favourite dishes in South East Asian cuisine. I’m not even sure if this dish is authentic to Thailand but I do know that this version I had at Chili Garden was very tasty. The spiciness of the sauce blended with the slight sweetness and really highlighted the crunchy beans very well. Sometimes, this dish can be on the oily side but I found that this version used just enough oil to maintain its taste and texture but was not overly oily at all.

Tricia picked the Pad Thai noodles. Not only was the serving size of this dish quite large, it was also very tasty. The noodles were slightly chewy and the sauce used on the noodles was creamy yet tangy and blended all the ingredients with the noodles very well. There was also a generous helping of prawns, bean sprouts, carrots and other veggies giving it a good crunch to contrast with the chewy noodles. On its own, this was probably enough to feed one very hungry person or two moderately hungry people.

Victoria’s choice was the yellow curried chicken. There was a good amount of coconut milk in this dish but not so much that it overwhelmed the other flavours. I suppose yellow curry is the mildest of the Thai curries but I would have liked this to have more of a kick to it. It would have been nice if there was more chicken in this dish but I enjoyed the complement of flavours from the onions, carrots, and Thai basil.

We ate the curry and beans with some bowls of rice that we ordered. Even though we were all quite hungry, we still ended up with some left overs since the portion sizes were so generous. The service was great and even though we were all there on a weeknight evening, the restaurant was more than half full. Chili Garden is a great addition to the slew of restaurants popping up in the South Main Street area.

Details:
4186 Main Street, Vancouver
Tel: 604-879-8896

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Price: $$