My sweet Amanda is dear to me, but the fact that she has a car means I love her a little more than my pedestrian friends. So many prohibitively distant locations become so accessible when you can get to your meals on wheels; so on a lovely weekend she and her man whisked me and mine off to the far-far-away realm of Woodside with the promise of copious consumption of delectable Thai food. We arrived at 5:30, aka Grandpa Hour, and effortlessly snagged a table in the front room (1 of 4 dining areas in this big/small establishment) and perused the novel of a menu – three pages of which are vegetarian, which is thankfully manageable when everything sounds delicious… but is woefully devoid of curry.

Whittling down our food selections, we placed our order with our curt and efficient waiter and soon the dishes began magically appearing on the table. In retrospect I wish I had been a little more diverse in choosing dishes, but I was clearly in an All Fried Appetizers/All Sauteed Entree mood this evening.

My BF fixated on the banal sounding egg roll and was eerily obsessed with consuming these skinny crunchy rolls apparently I’ve been denying him his required dose of crispy fried vegetable products since he plowed through these like there was a prizes at the bottom of the pile.

We also shared in the Fried Golden Bags with potato and peas filling an intensely complex savory punch of soft and hard elements consolidated in two perfect bites.

But the Curry Puff with potato and white onion filling and cucumber “sauce”  were wildly bland – save for the little dish of sweetly vinegared cucumbers and aromatic cilantro which I could have eaten a ocean of!

While devouring my deep fried bounty, I jealously eyed my friend’s voluptuous mound of Vegetarian Duck Salad which she willingly/unwillingly shared.

Next appeared our satisfying entrees which were less exciting then the previous round of dishes. The Sautéed Mock Duck Meat was herbaly balanced but heavily laden with bamboo and the meat is doled out with less generously then the pervious salad.

The Sauteed Tofu with cashew, pineapple and toasted chili was also scrumptious but unremarkable leaving me longing eyeing my friend’s Drunken Noodles, which of course she shared but still left me underwhelmed; but I loved that baggy of sticky rice! All in all the outstanding dishes outshined the less remarkable ones and our celebratory looking feast worked out to a meager $25 a person which is a minor price to pay to sample so many stellar dishes!

Sripraphai Thai Restaurant (Woodside)
6413 39th Ave
Woodside, NY 11377
(718) 899-9599
www.sripraphairestaurant.com