This is a longstanding neighborhood joint that recently either won the lottery or robbed a bank, and expanded to much posher digs across the street:
The new place still carries all the southern-style curries and fried dishes of the "old" branch, but also has a new menu of noodle dishes and a la carte dishes. We started our rather lengthy power lunch with an order of khao tang naa tang:
This dish consists of squares of crispy deep-fried rice served with a slightly sweet, generously savory currylike topping consisting of ground pork and shrimp. I liked it, mostly because they went light on the sweet, unlike most places.
Our food was washed down with glasses of fresh guava juice:
Our second appetizer (!) was papaya salad:
This is a dish that, I imagine, was previously relegated to roadside isaan, or NE Thai food joints. However now papaya salad is the de facto national dish of Thailand, and is seemingly available everywhere. Despite this restaurant serving mostly southern-style food, they did an excellent job on this dish, which featured an almost perfect (in my opinion) balance of sweet, sour, salty and spicy.
For my main, I ordered sen chan phat poo:
The famous rice noodles from Chantaburi fried with crab. Essentially phat thai without the peanuts, this dish was done very well, although perhaps a bit more crab meat wouldn't hurt.
Khuat ordered the southern special, kaeng tai plaa, literally "fish kidney curry", served with fermented rice noodles:
She found it too salty, but actually this dish is supposed to be salty. Nice try, Khuat.
It was an excellent lunch--the place is better than ever. I'm also excited about a couple more new places in the neighborhood--a dim sum place and what appears to be a "steak" restaurant just across the road from this one. Reportage will ensue.
Ban Nam Toei Hom
Soi Sena (near Kaset-Navamin highway)
02 578 3757