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The duck soup kicks
J&T Thai Street Food becomes a third option
Duck soup, an unsophisticated bowl of goodness
Before I left on my Euro Odyssey 2015, I would have divided (if pressed to do so candidly) the local Thai food scene into two camps: Sab-E-Lee and Everything Else. I know. Haters gonna hate.
In all fairness, Everything Else was, and still is, pretty good in terms of virtually identical take-out food. Sab-E-Lee just stands out as the Grand Poobah of local Thai dining. Perhaps hole-in-the-wall Asia Cafe in Chollas View could rate, but that place is really Something Else and ultimately neither here nor there.
Now there is a third category to my otherwise rock-solid division of Thai food. J&T Thai Street Food makes for a sort of triangular third option between the insane spicy goodness of Sab-E-Lee and the relative banality of just about every other Thai joint. In part, this is because the place is crazy cheap. $3 chicken wings and lettuce wraps are a smoking hot deal. Same price on the tom kha or tom yum soup (both good), with $1 extra for the “expensive” meats such as shrimp. Your curries and noodle dishes are all $7.50, and all seem worth it.
But the kicker is the duck soup. $8 for a bowl of piping hot, tangy broth teeming with rice noodles and concealed hunks of roast duck. I want to say it’s heavy on the tamarind, which gives it this sweet richness that’s somehow more intriguing than the straight-up umami MSG — sorry, “autolyzed yeast extract” (or other glutamic acid euphemism) — kick we’ve come to expect from noodle soup.
This isn’t an elegant soup. Far from it. It’s a downhome, unsophisticated bowl of goodness that smashes together everything you like about pho with all your favorite things about soy sauce flavored ramen. Go get some.
Here's something you might be interested in.
The duck soup kicks
J&T Thai Street Food becomes a third option
The duck soup kicks
J&T Thai Street Food becomes a third option
Duck soup, an unsophisticated bowl of goodness
Before I left on my Euro Odyssey 2015, I would have divided (if pressed to do so candidly) the local Thai food scene into two camps: Sab-E-Lee and Everything Else. I know. Haters gonna hate.
In all fairness, Everything Else was, and still is, pretty good in terms of virtually identical take-out food. Sab-E-Lee just stands out as the Grand Poobah of local Thai dining. Perhaps hole-in-the-wall Asia Cafe in Chollas View could rate, but that place is really Something Else and ultimately neither here nor there.
Now there is a third category to my otherwise rock-solid division of Thai food. J&T Thai Street Food makes for a sort of triangular third option between the insane spicy goodness of Sab-E-Lee and the relative banality of just about every other Thai joint. In part, this is because the place is crazy cheap. $3 chicken wings and lettuce wraps are a smoking hot deal. Same price on the tom kha or tom yum soup (both good), with $1 extra for the “expensive” meats such as shrimp. Your curries and noodle dishes are all $7.50, and all seem worth it.
But the kicker is the duck soup. $8 for a bowl of piping hot, tangy broth teeming with rice noodles and concealed hunks of roast duck. I want to say it’s heavy on the tamarind, which gives it this sweet richness that’s somehow more intriguing than the straight-up umami MSG — sorry, “autolyzed yeast extract” (or other glutamic acid euphemism) — kick we’ve come to expect from noodle soup.
This isn’t an elegant soup. Far from it. It’s a downhome, unsophisticated bowl of goodness that smashes together everything you like about pho with all your favorite things about soy sauce flavored ramen. Go get some.
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