Friday, September 2, 2011.
Waiting For The Washout. Thai Chili.
It's official. Tropical Storm Lee formed more or less on top of New Orleans today, and will be drifting around our neighborhood so long that there's talk of twenty inches of rainfall. And there goes the caravan to the supermarket to buy batteries and Vienna sausages. Mary Ann gets excited at the prospect of a storm. Tropical weather wastes a fantastic amount of my time, as I find myself clicking over to the dozens of web pages I've assembled with different perspectives on the storms in progress. The distraction is in the same category as the Talk Food With Tom Messageboard in terms of its ability to keep me from productive writing. Maybe I ought to have one computer for real work, and another for trivia. I think I'll set up that standing workstation this weekend that way.
The Marys had lunch at the new Fat Hen Grill on St. Charles Avenue. They say it's good, but they've always liked it better than I do. Mary Ann's menu: smoked sausage with homemade mustard, homemade barbecue sauce, and homemade pimiento cheese dip, homemade potato chips, and a club sandwich. Mary Leigh had a pulled pork sandwich (she seems to be eating those all the time lately, since our trip to Chicago). Everything was good, MA said, except the potato chips, which were inedible.
Mary Ann met me for supper to keep me from being lonely. It's been weeks since I took advantage of the wealth of Thai restaurants in the Mandeville-Covington corridor. Today's was the Thai Chili, a good-looking place that has held on despite its nearly-invisible location off Causeway Boulevard near Lowe's. I've eaten there enough to be able to write a detailed review. I haven't, for one reason only: I have a quota on North Shore articles in the Menu Daily. South Shore readers just pass over them. One guy even wrote me a nasty letter a few weeks ago saying I have too much North Shore stuff in here.
I began my Thai feast with cool shrimp spring rolls, which were so packed with lettuce that eating it was a lot like eating a salad. And very good at that, with a spicy-sweet, dark brown dipping sauce. The entree was Panang curry, my fave these days. They made it peppery enough for my balding pate to emit steam, the sign that they used the right amount of red pepper for my tastes.
After being operated entirely by very ethnic Asians for most of its history, Thai Chili now has on staff a young, very local woman who is waiting tables. She was very pleasant last time I was here, and was again tonight. She's a student at SLU. It's supposed to be somehow good when everybody in an ethnic restaurant (customers and staff) are of that ethnicity. But I must say that this non-accented server adds to the enjoyment of eating here. She certainly knows the food as well as anyone else here, but explains it better.
Thai Chili. Covington: 1102 N US 190. 985-809-0180.
