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| Koh Lipe Scarborough |
I love love love Thai Food. I
am always in search of some good Thai restaurants especially since my previous
favourite, Pai, is such a pain to make reservations (for our group) and get to.
Chiang Rai has replaced Pai’s spot in my heart (and stomach) for a while now,
but it looks like we have a contender! The fam and I checked out the Michelin
Guide’s Koh Lipe in the Scarborough/Markham location! I have heard good things
about the Chinatown location but am so glad there’s one a tad bit closer! And
we are soooo glad to have discovered this! Now, I understand that Pai specializes
on Northern Thai and that Koh Lipe specializes in Southern Thai, but it is Thai
to me and I love all of it 😊!
It took a while to choose
what we wanted to try since everything on the menu looked so good! We finally
settled on a couple of specials and some classics.
The staff was friendly and the service was fast. It did not
take long to get all of our dishes served!
To start, we got the Crispy
fried smelt which was so yummy! It got us excited about all the other dishes to
come! The smelt was topped with crispy garlic and it was delightfully tasty!
The green chili dipping sauce gave the perfect sweet and sour taste to balance out
some of the oil.
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| Crispy Smelt @Koh Lipe |
We then got Tom Yum hot pot
which was pork bone in Tom Yum soup. The serving was generous and while broth
was good, I could use a bit more kick. After a while, we had to ask them to
turn off the flame so that the boiling broth does not all evaporate.
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| Tom Yum Hot Pot @Koh Lipe |
We also got the Chef’s Special
Luok Jhim platter which featured steamed mussels, shrimp, squid and fish, rice
noodles flavoured with fried garlic, chili-lime sauce and lettuce wraps. We were
thinking, after some very good (junk) eating the previous days, maybe we should
go for some steamed food. We reminded ourselves later, to make no pretentions going
forward! While it was still delicious (seafood tends to always delight this
family), this was our least favourite dish. It was just, well, steamed seafood
with lettuce wrap and dipping sauce. What did I really expect? Anyway, we vowed
to try the Prik Pao Talay (Stir-Fried smoked chilli platter, shrimps, mussels,
squid, and clams) next time!
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| Luok Jhim platter @Koh Lipe |
We all definitely enjoyed Mas
Sa Man which was a tamarind coconut red curry with peanuts and potato. We got
Braised Beef (instead of the Veggies/Tofu version—see why we felt we needed to
have the steamed seafood?). It was just
an explosion of flavours in our mouths! Curry with tamarind was something we don’t
usually get to try and we really enjoyed the sweet, sour, mildly spicy sauce
with the very tender braised beef. It will be a challenge not to order again
even if we want to try so many other dishes when we come back.
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| Mas Sa Man @Koh Lipe |
Of course, we got our usual Pad
Thai (with chicken) and it while it was not the best, it still had all the
elements we love about this dish--chewy noodles, good sauce (not too much tamarind
to make it sour and not too sweet). They didn’t scrimp on the chicken and did not
drown the dish with bean sprouts. Will try their Pad See Ew or Pad Kee Mao on
our next visit.
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| Pad Thai (with chicken) @Koh Lipe |
We also got a Honey Longan
drink and Thai milk tea which were good to balance out the rich flavours in
between bites—and allowed us to eat some more!
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| drinks @Koh Lipe |
We ended the meal with the mango
sticky rice dessert. It came with half a mango atop wonderfully chewy sticky
rice and coconut cream. The mango jelly topping was cute but doesn’t really do
much to add to the already delightful dessert. It was a wonderful way to end
our meal!
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| Mango Sticky Rice @Koh Lipe |
There were Southern Thai specialties we have not tried so we would definitely go back. We
think this will now become our new favourite Thai place!
