Simply Thai Shanghai Xintiandi

Simply Thai
http://www.simplythai-sh.com/simplythai/index.html

Why a review for a Thai restaurant in Shanghai and no Chinese restaurants? Well, I was impressed by the food and drink there. Also, it marks my last dinner at Shanghai of summer 2006, a time to celebrate 10 weeks of wonderful time in Shanghai. Well, on to the review, the real content of the blog.

Drinks:
1 cocktail (at $5, or 40 RMB) and 2 mocktails (30RMB or so) and one Thai ice tea

• Pink Pussycat: gin, pineapple juice, grapefruit juice, grenadine. I can't remember the ingredients and I found a bunch of different recipes online.Sweet, pretty, light drink. http://www.cocktaildb.com/recipe_detail?id=3551
• Cinderella: sweet and sour, I think the lemonade is coming through?
• Johnny Appleseed: ice cream, apple juice, and some other stuff

update: okay, apparently $5 is not really that big of a deal, I've seen cocktails for $5.50 near Columbia University.

Food:
5 dishes

• Fish cake: fried, but light.
• salad: forgot the name, it was too long anyway. spicy, but not due to peppers. surprisingly raw scallions really do kick!
• green curry chicken: the best green curry I've had, ever! DC Thai food has got nothing on it. perfect coconut milk and spices, we didn't waste a drop. In fact, our waitress reminded us to order rice since we needed something to eat our curries with. What a smart woman, I think I had 3 helpings of rice. Okay, so I was hungry, too!
• beef with coriander: cilantro, coriander, 香菜, whatever you call it, is amazing. they cooked the beef very well, so that you can smell and taste the coriander with it. of course, my favorite part of the whole dish was the crunchy texture of the cilantro stalks. Gotta get that recipe...
• some sort of noodle: it was tasty, and you could add stuff to it, like peppers and peanuts

Atmosphere:
we had an outside table with nice candlelight.

Service:
the waitress smiled a lot, which is highly unusual in China.