Thairish restaurant has a very limited menu. It takes up a tiny space on Charles Street. The distance between the front of the house and the back of the house is about three feet. They have two tables, a counter, and a healthy takeout business. For my first two years in Baltimore they were a great staple of my just-missed-the-cafeteria's-hours food supply. The curries were flavorful and spicy, the noodles in the pad thai tender, and the Thai iced tea had that special flavor that probably has something to do with its peculiar shade of orange.
This is no longer the case. In the 90s the place won all sorts of awards: price, quality, last minute dining out, best place to eat at 42 times a week - that sort of thing. They stopped winning those a few years ago. Everything that they serve has declined in quality.
I tried the shrimp satay appetizer - it was made of frozen shrimp, which is to be expected from a place this size. When you don't serve a lot of deep-fried and breaded shrimp every day, you can't be expected to carry fresh. The peanut sauce that came in a little plastic cup was all right, but was by no means better than something you can get out of a jar nowadays. I'm not sure this sauce didn't come from one.
The Thai iced tea, which is one of my favorite drinks, was bland. It was stale, and very disappointing. When good, this drink is sweet, it's smooth with cream, and it's got more than just iced tea going on in there.
I sampled two chicken curries, Panang and Gaeng. Both had identical problems. These curries, and all the others on the menu (which means all entrees save pad thai, which is a noodle dish) are made of your choice of protein - shrimp (unbreaded, but likely not fresh either), chicken, or tofu for a dollar less. They also have a scoop of boiled rice, a few boiled vegetables, and the all-important curry sauce itself.
The chicken was boiled, which is never a good idea for my money, but it can be made to work. Here, though, the chicken was under-cooked and lukewarm. Getting the temperatures wrong on the various components of a dish is a clear indication of poor planning in the kitchen - one of the main duties of a cook is to make the parts of a dish, indeed of a meal, all come out at the same time, or close enough as not to matter. That didn't happen.
The boiled rice was actually good. It was warm, tender, and needed salt, but all rice does. The rice is one they got right for everything else they got wrong.
The boiled vegetables have always been a problem. There's a little broccoli, some snap peas, slices of carrot. That's it, always the same, every dish. They are also a little too raw, and a little under-seasoned. The curry sauce was tragic. It was a little spicy, with barely any seasoning. Neither of the dishes were any good. Had they been, I'd be able to remember the differences and recall the flavors more precisely.
One final note: I don't give a damn about service, but the guy who serves you is rude and unpleasant. I asked for no ice cubes in the Thai iced tea, and the guy said yes. Then, before I was done ordering, he said that it was "flatly impossible."
This is not true because the tea was off by itself in the cooler and the ice gets scooped from the freezer. Lukewarm tea without so much dilution is what I wanted and because the guy wanted to sell me frozen water instead of brewed tea he lied to me.
Thairish
804 N. Charles St.
Phone: (410) 752-5857
Location: Mt. Vernon
Hours: Tues-Fri 11 a.m. - 9:30 p.m. Sat and Sun 4:30-10 p.m.
