Tasty Thai

Thai is a difficult language, with a pretty incomprehensible script that makes for cool tattoos, but does not facilitate easy understanding. Having said that, apparently the word 'aroy' (phonetic spelling, obviously) means 'tasty', which is why you see it mentioned often around Thai restaurants.

Aroy Thai in Westville, is definitely living up to its name. It's a small, fairly nondescript restaurant tucked into the Engen Centre, a strip mall on Rodger Sishi Road which also houses a Food Lover's Market and the A Tasca restaurant.

When visiting Thailand, I found that the ornateness of the decor was inversely correlated with the quality of the food, and the same holds true here. Inside Aroy Thai, simple plastic tables and chairs, tiled floors and office-like ceilings are the perfect complement to fantastically tasty Thai food.

As it was our first visit, I wanted to try the Tom Yum soup, which to me is the acid test of a Thai restaurant's quality. Too often in local establishments the hot and sour flavours of a good Tom Yum are dumbed down to an over salty broth housing a few sad prawns. Happily, this was not the case here. The soup, when it arrived, was a beautiful sight with a bright red-orange slick covering the broth and islands of dried chilli, spring onion and mushroom peeping above the surface. Diving deeper there were plump prawns to be found and flavours of lemongrass and lime leaves.

We also tried the wonton soup (the restaurant does several Chinese influenced dishes) and found it equally good, with delicious, fat dumplings.

We washed down out starters with Singha beers - Aroy is licensed and has a reasonable selection of beers as well as a small wine list.

Continuing with the classics, I wanted to taste the Pad Thai for my main course. We selected calamari as the protein, but were somewhat disappointed, as the dish was rather bland, with not enough fish sauce or shrimp paste to impart a good umami. We requested additional chilli, which arrived in a dried, powdered form, and improved matters somewhat.

Luckily we also ordered the creatively named 'Duck in a Jacket' which consists of a half duck, deboned and wrapped in a pancake. The owner (a Thai lady) clearly thought that this was a good choice, and seemed pleased that we had ordered it - perhaps next time we visit I will ask her to choose a selection of dishes for us.

The duck was crisp and dark skinned, wrapped in an egg-rich pancake and drenched in a sticky and sweet sauce that went well with the salty duck. Definitely a dish that I would order again.

Like most Thai restaurants, there were limited desert options, and we opted to buy a bag of White Rabbit candies on our way out instead.

With an extensive menu still waiting to be explored and three out of four excellent dishes on first attempt, Aroy Thai holds a lot of potential. Sushi is also served, and several patrons were eating it - it looked pretty good. They also do takeaways.

'Gin khao reu yeung?' is another useful Thai phrase. It's used as a greeting, similar in meaning to 'are you well?', but literally means 'have you eaten rice yet?'. I like the priorities the Thai have.