Pad Thai

For the month of November, we reviewed PAD THAI for ‘For the Gram Restaurant Reviews’ 🙂

Who doesn’t love thai food?! Pad thai is a dish typically made with rice noodles, chicken, beef, tofu, peanuts, scrambled eggs, bean sprouts, and other vegetables. It’s one of the most popular dishes in Thai cusine! My guest for this month was not one, but three judges! The team of One Peak Creative which makes up Meg, Glen, and Conar. Conar and I had vegan pad thai and Meg and Glen had regular.

What makes pad thai GOOD anyway?

-“gloopy levels” – haha if you were watching my IG stories, you would’ve seen we talked about how much sauce a pad thai dish has. Have you ever had a dish and found it super liquidly, slimey, or gloopy? It’s the same with pad thai. You want enough sauce but too much of a good thing can make it not enjoyable.

-noodles – a common problem with pad thai is the noodles sticking together. You don’t want your noodles in big clumps but rather, coated in the perfect amount of sauce and cooked to perfection.

-garnishes – we talked about toppings a lot in my IG stories! Some pad thai I find just serve noodles and the proteins. It’s nice to have an assortment of sautéed vegetables as well.

Let’s review where we went!

Thai Terrace

Thai Terrace is one of my favorite Thai restaurants in Downtown Kelowna so I naturally started with them 🙂 As you can see by this photo, their pad thai is spectacular. First off, what beautiful presentation! And the portion size is massive – great for sharing or for leftovers. It comes with a ton of toppings and the perfect amount of sauce. I am always impressed when I order the pad thai from Thai Terrace and would highly recommend.

Bai Tong

Bai Tong is also in downtown Kelowna and was a popular spot mentioned by my followers to try out. I had never been prior to this! Bai Tong offers two options for pad thai: their authentic pad thai and westernized pad thai. Let me explain the difference between the two!

*A lot of people don’t even know what real pad thai is or how it’s traditionally made in Thailand as there are so may variations. If you want original classic flavor, order the tamarind version. The tamarind paste is a more tangy taste and the overall color of the pad thai should be brown. The westernized version is more of a red orange color due to the tomato sauce, paprika, ketchup, or some other ingredient to make it that color. They say they make it this color to make it more “appealing” to our Western culture. The tomato sauce almost makes it sweeter in taste.*

Now that you know the difference, back to Bai Tong. So yes you can order EITHER version which is really neat! I preferred the tamarind version personally but some of the One Peak team enjoyed the tomato sauce version better. It’s completely up to you!

Pick Thai

Last but not least, we visited Pick Thai which which again, is in Downtown Kelowna and a spot I had never been to. This has more of a fast food/quick service thai food vibe. They also provide the options of authentic pad thai and westernized pad thai like Bai Tong.

First off, our pad thai was made super quick! This would be a great spot if you wanted some quick thai food on the go. If you wanted a more longer sit down restaurant experience, I would recommend checking out the other two places we went to. In terms of the dish, we noticed Pick Thai offered some different veggies that I’m not used to seeing in pad thai such as broccoli, and mushroom. It was ironic because some of the members of the One Peak team who liked the tamarind version at the other restaurant, preferred the tomato sauce version here at Pick Thai. Everybody makes it different! Pick Thai’s version also comes in a smaller size compared to the other restaurants. This is great if you wanted an pad thai for one individual. This was the only stop I could actually finish it in one sitting!

And that concluded the month of pad thai! Wow, I learned a lot about pad thai this month. How cool is it that there are two options for the sauces? I didn’t know there was this distinction nor realized restaurants offered both! We were also thoroughly impressed with how kind and gracious all the owners are at all of these restaurants! One of the reasons I love doing these reviews is because I always look forward to meeting the people behind it!

I also want to mention that all these restaurants could make their pad thai vegan as well! They have no problem altering their dishes to meet a plant based person’s needs.

As mentioned, Thai Terrace has always been a fav pad thai of mine but make sure to check out all these local joints to get your thai food fix!

See you next time!

-Jenna xoxo