Na’s Thai Café – Chanhassen, MN

I had a hankerin’ for Thai food today and I checked out the nearby Thai restaurants. There was a place a short distance away (actually, I had no idea how far away it was since I’ve never been to Chanhassen), and I figured I’d race out of work at lunch and see how it was. It had some good reviews online and also had won an award for best Thai food from Citipages or some other local award-giver. I read they had a good lunch buffet. Even though I generally don’t like buffets, especially Chinese food buffets, I decided to give it a shot since I had never been to a Thai food buffet.

I got there in less than 10 minutes and found it pretty easily. It’s in a strip mall, which as we all know is a good thing in Minnesota (steer away from strip mall cuisine in Illinois, if given the choice). Walked into a pretty nice and clean restaurant with maybe two other tables occupied. I told the waitress I’d be eating the buffet. I stepped over to the buffet and was shocked at how small it was (twss).

Really, it seemed to only have a couple of things on it and half of it was devoted to condiments and sauces. On top of all that, about half of the dishes were vegetarian (at least today they were). I grumbled about it, but I certainly didn’t seem to have a problem filling my plate. And so you know, I’m done complaining at this point about the food.

I got a cream cheese puff and a fried egg roll (just one half of an egg roll though – I’m not a pig). I also got white rice, cashew chicken curry, Pad Bai pork, Pad Mee vegetable noodles, and sprinkled some crushed peanuts on top with some pepper flakes. The food was delicious. The cream cheese puff is hard to rise above the rest, but it did seem better to me than most. The egg roll was also good. Tiny hint of cinnamon just to let you know it was there and not enough to shove it down your throat. This is how I would like them cooked from now on (I’ll be sure to request them cooked like Na’s the next time I go to a Thai restaurant – ha ha ha).

The Cashew Chicken Curry was the best dish. Really spicy (the website reviews warn you to be careful when ordering off the menu and what spice level you should request), and flavorful. Big pea pods and cashew nuts were mixed in with this. The Pad Bai pork was really good as well, although it had these weird tiny trees in it. Never seen these before. If parsley grew with a trunk, that’s what it would look like, but darker and with some purple. It didn’t taste like much, but it was still weird to see a tiny tree on your fork.

I looked at some other people’s plates who had ordered off the menu and saw they delivered your bowl of white rice to your table on a plate with a clear glass bowl on top, like some sort of sexy Barbarella space theme. Interesting. Also, I really regretted not ordering Spring Rolls when I saw another girl’s order arrive. It looked amazing. Then, these old ladies sitting at the table next to me kept talking about underwear and it kind of disgusted me – it wasn’t just their own underwear they were talking about. And also, there seemed to be a lot of Peter Cetera playing on the radio – always makes me think of my sister and my friend Callous-un (no, not together – ewww).

To top the meal off, I had a really tasty and sweet fortune cookie. I like the sweet ones better than the lemon-y ones, but I’ll eat them both. And in keeping with the tradition of getting hilariously ghey messages inside my fortune cookies, I got this one: “Investigate new possibilities with friends. Now is the time!”

I’ll be going here again, fo sho.

Top 5 things about Na’s Thai Café
1. Cashew Chicken Curry
2. Cream Cheese Puff
3. Pad Bai Pork
4. Egg Roll
5. It’s close to work

Bottom 5 things
1. Gerd and I love Thai food and she never got to eat here
2. Should have gotten the Spring Rolls
3. Weird old-lady conversation involving their (and other people’s) underwear made me want to wash my ears out with bleach
4. Tiny buffet (in square footage only)(and I got over it)
5. It’s not on my way home if I wanted to grab dinner

www.yourlocalfood.com/Southwest_Sbs/NasThaiCafe/Na'sThaiCafe.htm