Thai Street serves terrific food in unlikely spot

Those of us who live in Las Vegas know dull moments are extremely few. The more interesting elements include the best selection of restaurants in the world and appearances or residencies by some of the globe's top entertainers. They also may include spotting a world-famous actor out doing his Christmas shopping, or running into Elvis or even Abraham Lincoln, complete with frock coat, in the grocery store.

And you just never know when you're going to happen upon a really good Mexican restaurant adjacent to a strip club, or a top-notch Thai spot in a plaza with a store selling showgirl supplies, a spa that promises "girls, girls, girls" and something that appears to be an adult film studio.

Only in Vegas, as they say.

If a reader hadn't tipped me to Thai Street Cafe I probably never would have spotted it. But the enthusiastic recommendation gave me an inkling that there was something there, and indeed there was.

That something started with a mix of the dishes you'll find in every Thai restaurant in town and some that aren't quite as familiar. In the latter camp was our appetizer of Hoi Jor ($8.95), which started with a mix of crabmeat, shrimp and pork. That mixture was tucked into bean-curd skins, a soy-milk by-product that has a springy, almost stretchy texture that retains its resiliency even after a dip in the fryer. With the accompanying plum sauce, these were a refreshing departure from the satays and the rolls that often are the only choices.

But we couldn't stay away from the classics for long and knew a bowl of Tom Kha ($8.95) would hit the spot on this chilly evening. Like most Thai restaurants, Thai Street offers a choice of additions (chicken, vegetables or tofu are included in the price; shrimp is $2 extra and a seafood combination $4 extra). The problem I usually have with this is that the additions generally are cooked separately and don't get flavored by the broth, a soul-satisfying blend of coconut, lemon grass, galangal and kaffir lime leaves with mushrooms, tomato, cilantro and onions mixed in. I don't know if Thai Street uses a different technique, but the chicken we chose was imbued with those flavors. And I also liked that it was served in a vessel atop an alcohol burner, bordered by a framework of rustic wood, that was both attractive and effective at keeping the soup hot.

Panang curry ($8.95) is another of the old familiars I turn to time and again, mainly because, while it has multiple layers of flavor, it's not as blazing hot as other curries. That was the case with this version, filled with large cubes of firm, artfully cut tofu (included in the price, as are pork, vegetables or chicken; beef is $1 extra, shrimp $2 extra, a combination of meats and shrimp $3 extra and a seafood combination $4 extra — and we loved that they offered so many options here).

And a dish the menu simply called eggplant ($9.95, with the same additional charges as with the curry above), which turned out to be a sort of stir-fry with lots of mellow eggplant, plenty of tender beef and bell peppers, plus basil, garlic and oyster sauce, for a very pleasing combination of both contrasting and complementary flavors.

Service throughout was great. We were the only non-Asians in the room, but communication was never a problem (although we did observe a bit of benign racism in that we were given silverware, while everybody else had chopsticks). The decor is industrial, which fits both the times — industrial decor, in many interpretations and gradations, is big right now — and the location, in an area that's heavily industrial, the somewhat lascivious aspects notwithstanding.

"Industrial Road" and "Thai food" aren't something we often see in the same sentence, but in this case, the pairing works.

— Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Email Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com. Find more of her stories at www.reviewjournal.com and follow @HKRinella on Twitter.