Florissant’s Pearl Café Brings the Heat
Feb 18, 2011 St. Louis, missouri, restaurants
In search of an eating challenge that is about the heat rather than the gluttonous quantity a diner can cram down their gullet, I believe I have found the first heat-oriented eating challenge in St. Louis.
Still in its infancy, Florissant’s Pearl Café began posting pictures to its Facebook page last November in a gallery they call the Spicy Level 25 Plus Club.
As a regular, I’m surprised I hadn’t found out about this sooner. In fact, I’d even suggested they start one in the past after stories of their Super Bowl specialty: ghost pepper hot-wings.
Speaking with owner, Tommy Truong, while dining last night, it seems the current record is actually a Spicy Level 100! That diner called into work the next day so you’ll be happy to know it won’t take ousting him for you to get the Pearl Café nod of approval. While a handful of customers seem to be battling it out—outdoing each other with each visit—it takes a mere 25 heat level to make the Facebook gallery. It’s at 50+ the ghost peppers get involved, and Truong tells me they’re working on a t-shirt for the first customer that pulled the feat off which will appropriately read, Thai in the Hole.
My recommendation if you attempt this is to stray away from things like soups, curries, and noodles and go for a stir-fried dish of some sort instead. Having had a spicy level five soup, it’s not the heat that gets you with a dish like that, it’s the fumes.
Hats off to those that have made the cut, and cheers to your following mornings.
Tags: Florissant, Pearl Café, Scott Truong, Thai, Tommy Truong
Nothing’s gonna ever keep me down
Feb 18, 2010 general food
I knew there was a reason I liked the people of Thailand. – fortune from Pearl Cafe.
Yes, Simply Thai is Simply Delicious
Dec 12, 2007 restaurants
I’ve been telling people about it for years as one of the three places worth eating at in Florissant, so I was pretty pleased when, off my recommendation, Ian reviewed Simply Thai in October .
I personally believe Simply Thai to be the best, not to mention most authentic, Thai restaurant in the city, and although to most people it’s extremely odd to find it in an old Taco Bell in Florissant, the reality is, Florissant has a decent sized Thai population. In fact we even have a Thai festival every year thanks to a Buddhist temple, which I admit, seemed very strange to me when I moved out here.
For starters, they have my favorite mus-sa-mun curry hands down. It was the dish I’d told Ian about, and he elaborated on it so well, I’ll spare myself the time–just read his review.
Over a few visits he came to (at least) a similar conclusion to mine about Simply Thai, and although he ate a lot of great food, in this bloggers opinion, the best thing on the menu alluded him.
Like lollipops of fatty joy, pictured above is the grilled pork and sticky rice. Always piping hot, the sticky rice, which I didn’t take a picture of, comes out in little woven baskets which, minus the addition of the plastic bag that holds the rice, seems like it’s probably the traditional way to cook sticky rice if I had to guess.
The star, however, is the pork. Marinated in what they call specialty sauce it’s obviously a mixture that contains sugar, and the tender skewers, with their sweet charred fat, ensure their lifespan on your plate is short. I almost didn’t remember to take a picture before devouring them as we quickly inhaled three of the five portions. It’s the kind of food memory you can almost taste, and we wanted it for real.
On this visit I also had Tom Yum Noodle soup. I’d been looking at it on the menu for years–unadventurously dodging it for safer menu choices instead. It’s a bowl of rice noodles with fish balls, fish cakes, ground pork, bean sprouts, peanuts, green onions, cilantro and tofu.
While I believe in trying new foods as often as possible, and I’m open to most anything, sometimes I do find myself at the losing end of my Western taste buds, and this was one of those times. Most of the fish on the Simply Thai menu is catfish, and one bite of the cake sort of confirmed that it too was probably catfish. The firm fish meatballs were mostly tolerable, but the cakes sent shudders down my spine as it was one of the fishiest tasting things I’ve consumed, ever. I’ve no doubt it’s probably really good–executed with perfection–but as I don’t personally care for catfish, I had to shamefully swim around the cakes and balls for the rest of meal slurping up what was, thankfully, a delicious broth.
Another item Simply Thai gets right is lahb ghai. It’s a fiery salad of finely ground chicken mixed with lime juice, peppers, ground rice, onions and cilantro along with a few secondary items including the sometimes heavy hand of nam bplah (fish sauce). Lettuce is also usually served on the side to roll it up in.
I think I’ve been to the greater portion of Thai restaurants in St. Louis, and when you do this, without having an item you always repeat, there’s just no way to judge them accurately; lahb gai is one of my measuring sticks, and I’ve found that the crunchier the rice is–not to mention the spicier overall–the more authentic the restaurant seems to be, and the more freshly they’re preparing things. I’ve had bad examples all over the city ranging from obviously premixed soggy-rice, to under-spiced and flavorless, to chicken that rather than having been ground was precooked and finely chopped. At Simply Thai they succeed on both counts, meaning, for me, it is a win.
You should definitely go to Simply Thai if you like Thai food, it’s a cheesy comment I know, but it really is simply delicious.
Check out their menu here.
Tags: Florissant, lahb-gai, mus-sa-mun-curry, Simply-Thai, Thai
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