You know how you drink hot chocolate in winter to warm up after an hour of digging your car out? What do we do in summer to stay cool? Swim, eat copious amounts of ice cream, stand naked and pose like Captain Morgan in front of a fan after a shower? Try eating spicy southeast Asian food! Sink your gob into a steamy bowl of hot soup noodle or chow down on a plate of spicy noodles. I remember when I spent time in southeast Asia, the spicier the food was, the cooler you became. I’m not going to give you a science lesson on how sweat cools you down and how spicy foods make you sweat that would perpetuate the evaporation of moisture to give your body a cooling effect. I recently visited this Thai restaurant in Villeray serving up some authentic Thai and Lao cuisine that made me sweat in places I didn’t even know I had glands.
Tag:
Thai
One of the least represented cuisines in NDG/Westmount is Thai. Why? A question that will stand the test of time along with “why isn’t there any pho in the area?” and “why is it only here that people feel the entitlement to cross the street diagonally?” along with the classic, “why is there a Lululemon uniform for old ladies in NDG/Westmount?” I recently went to try and answer these age old questions starting with the lack of Thai food representation in the area. I noticed this place a while back and was skeptical, Pick Thai – located on de Maisoneuve and Northcliffe, across from the Vendome Metro station and in the shadow of the new super duper hospital, I was skeptical but impressed. Skeptical because it was the first of its kind, the one to try and set precedence to say that this area needs a taste of the Southeast and impressed for exactly the same reasons.
I’ve always said that the best part about south-east Asia, is not the beaches, the cheap beer, or ladyboys… but the FOOD. This week’s recipe is one that I’ve been working on for a while that even upon the smell of the marinade, throws me back to sweltering nights sitting on the side of the road or public parking lot turned street food hub chowing down on plate after plates of these chicken satay skewers served to us by an Indian hawker who insisted we called “Little Brother”. My buddies and I were such great customers what when we sat down, he’d greet us as “Big brother” and immediately asked “how many plates?” – in Cantonese.