neglected to mention that on Friday for lunch I went over to Crying Thaiger, the new “rustic Thai” place in Malden. It’s really not too rustic, but the place has a good atmosphere with a kind of a faux Thai street stall vibe. (isn’t there also a place in Davis Sq coming with a similar concept? hmmm.) Y’know, corrugated tin coffee bar, Thai license plates on the wall, etc. Service was really attentive and friendly, and I got a free Thai iced coffee since it was their opening day. Points for that. (Points subsequently lost when it was served in a Mason jar).
Menu seems kind of standard, with a couple of wild cards. There are a few “small plate” items (mee krob, grilled pork skewers, roti with green curry, etc) and some clay pot stuff but in general it’s the usual. I ordered the khai krok (sunny side up quail eggs) with soy and scallions (you can alternately get the spicy sauce) & they were quite good and came in a cool cast iron pan made seemingly for this purpose. Crispy on the bottom, runny in the yolk–this was a pretty good dish, a decent starter.
Also ordered the signature Crying Tiger beef (Sue Rong-Hai). This was a huge disappointment, since except for a piece or two that was tender the majority of this plate was overcooked, chewy steak and some ground toasted rice with a Jaew sauce on the side that really lacked essential heat. It tasted OK, but had not a lot of anything exciting about it. More sweet than hot, some sourness but overall a little flat for a signature dish. The promised seasoned vegetables were a well cut pile of boring bok choy, broccoli and carrots. Yawn.
The ~10 dollar or so lunch specials going around looked OK, so maybe that’s the play here. For the most part I had hoped for something a little more exciting, but I’d be willing to give it another shot since it’s new and for some reason in Malden there are very few Thai places. Maybe there’s some things lurking in the menu that are more promising than what I got on the first go round.
I’ll let you know.
