Smiles
May 28th, 2007, 19:13
From Saturday's Globe & Mail (or the National Mop & Pail to many) a deliciously adoring review of the Young Thailand Restaurant way out in the west Dundas St. backwaters of Toronto close to where I spent my sleazy and Thailand-ignorant younger days in the big city (circa late 60's).
In Bangkok & environs you could undoudtedly get meals like this for 15 bucks for two, perhaps less ... in TO you won't escape for much less than a hundred bucks. But who's counting . . . makes my mouth water for Thai food ~ right now!. Kates gushes over Wandee Young's spring rolls and simple fried rice, and has all sorts of compliments around the whole Wandee experience. A place to try and look up if you're ever in Toronto.
(Now if we can just stop the Mods from moving this to the Global Forum, I'll be happy).
Wandee Young: back in the kitchen and better than ever
By JOANNE KATES
May 26, 2007
YOUNG THAILAND
2907 Dundas St. W. 416-368-1368. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $80.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _
It has been a long road from that street stall in Thailand for Wandee Young. It wasn't precisely a street stall, more of a sidewalk extension of her mother's kitchen, where mom cooked and sold food for a living. Young learned to cook there, and was infected - apparently for life - with the restaurant-business bug.
In 1977, at the age of 32, Young came to Canada with her husband. She worked as a kitchen helper at Deep Sea Shantung in the old Chinatown on Dundas Street, and the couple saved their money. When a cheap Chinese restaurant on a desolate stretch of Eglinton near the Allen Expressway went belly-up in April of 1978, Young picked up the business for $2,000, which was about what they had saved at that point.
That first Young Thailand had five tables and the rent was $500 a month. Young did all the cooking herself. She says it was the first Thai restaurant in Canada, and I have not heard that disputed. I reviewed the place in the fall of 1978. Never having eaten Thai food, I had no standards by which to judge it save my taste buds. Chilies, coriander, coconut and tamarind were almost unbearably exciting to a Toronto bec fin for whom garlic was risqu├й.
To my untutored palate, Young's cooking was sublime. Unfortunately perhaps not so much to her husband, who decamped shortly after they opened the restaurant. Young lasted there alone until the end of 1978, when she went to the late lamented Bamboo on Queen Street West. There, she spent 10 years quietly turning out her signature pad Thai, Thai curries and spring rolls.
Young went out on her own again; she opened Young Thailand Gerrard Street (at Jarvis) in 1990 and it lasted until 1997. In 1993, she opened the big fancy Young Thailand on Church Street at Adelaide. That business went fine for a while, but it was always too big and too stressful, Young says. "I always had problems with cooks. They wouldn't show up and I would have to hurry over and do it all myself. And the restaurant was too big, the rent was too expensive." Competition from the dozens of other Thai restaurants downtown didn't help.
Young threw in the towel and closed that Young Thailand late last year. Last month, she opened yet another Young Thailand, this time in an utterly unprepossessing block of Dundas Street west of Keele. Cheap rent, 100 seats and a kitchen she can personally control are what drew her to the Junction. She brought enough pretty Thai things from downtown to spruce up the place nicely, so that, having penetrated five metres into the long narrow room, one quickly forgets the charmlessness of Dundas West.
Funny thing: I learned to love pad Thai at Young's first restaurant, but at this new Young Thailand the pad Thai is the only thing I find bland. All else, though, bears the dazzling imprimatur of Wandee Young's own hands. Her misfortune is our good luck: She has been forced from the office back into the kitchen, where she now does all the cooking.
Her cold salad rolls are so far superior to any others in town that I shall be forever consigned to schlepping to the Junction: She stuffs them with a lot of perfectly cooked plump chicken, very lightly pickled carrot and young coriander sprouts. Instead of the usual sweet chili sauce, hers is a tamarind-based complexity of sweet and sour. Her shrimp rolls are ungreasy, highly flavoured delights scented with tree ear fungus, marinated glass noodles and carrot shreds. Young's green mango salad is more robustly flavoured than elsewhere, thanks to roasted cashews along with the usual peanuts, and more chicken. Her commitment to impeccably fresh mint and coriander doesn't hurt.
Papaya salad employs raw Chinese long beans as counterpoint to the bite of fresh chilies and garlic, and Chinese dried shrimps for deep flavour. Shredded lime adds big zing to the classic Thai sweetened vinegar dressing. Thai fried rice has more flavour than even an epicurean optimist expects from fried rice; thanks to fresh pineapple chunks, toasted cashews, green onions and big fat shrimp perfectly cooked, this could be a meal for $11.95.
But then one would have missed Young's garlic shrimp and her red curry duck. The latter is duck that she has roasted, then deboned and drowned in creamy coconut hot red curry, with baby eggplant and barely cooked grapes. The chunks of duck are big and tender, the eggplant firm, the sauce splendid. Her garlic shrimps are huge and perfectly cooked, and their dark sweet/sour tamarind sauce demands a spoon.
If you peel the new Dundas Street address stickers off the front of the Young Thailand menu, underneath you see the old address: 81 Church St. It's the same menu she had on Church Street, and the move may have, to her, symbolized failure.
But we're the winners here, because getting Wandee Young back in the kitchen puts the fun on the plate.
Cheers ...
In Bangkok & environs you could undoudtedly get meals like this for 15 bucks for two, perhaps less ... in TO you won't escape for much less than a hundred bucks. But who's counting . . . makes my mouth water for Thai food ~ right now!. Kates gushes over Wandee Young's spring rolls and simple fried rice, and has all sorts of compliments around the whole Wandee experience. A place to try and look up if you're ever in Toronto.
(Now if we can just stop the Mods from moving this to the Global Forum, I'll be happy).
Wandee Young: back in the kitchen and better than ever
By JOANNE KATES
May 26, 2007
YOUNG THAILAND
2907 Dundas St. W. 416-368-1368. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $80.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _
It has been a long road from that street stall in Thailand for Wandee Young. It wasn't precisely a street stall, more of a sidewalk extension of her mother's kitchen, where mom cooked and sold food for a living. Young learned to cook there, and was infected - apparently for life - with the restaurant-business bug.
In 1977, at the age of 32, Young came to Canada with her husband. She worked as a kitchen helper at Deep Sea Shantung in the old Chinatown on Dundas Street, and the couple saved their money. When a cheap Chinese restaurant on a desolate stretch of Eglinton near the Allen Expressway went belly-up in April of 1978, Young picked up the business for $2,000, which was about what they had saved at that point.
That first Young Thailand had five tables and the rent was $500 a month. Young did all the cooking herself. She says it was the first Thai restaurant in Canada, and I have not heard that disputed. I reviewed the place in the fall of 1978. Never having eaten Thai food, I had no standards by which to judge it save my taste buds. Chilies, coriander, coconut and tamarind were almost unbearably exciting to a Toronto bec fin for whom garlic was risqu├й.
To my untutored palate, Young's cooking was sublime. Unfortunately perhaps not so much to her husband, who decamped shortly after they opened the restaurant. Young lasted there alone until the end of 1978, when she went to the late lamented Bamboo on Queen Street West. There, she spent 10 years quietly turning out her signature pad Thai, Thai curries and spring rolls.
Young went out on her own again; she opened Young Thailand Gerrard Street (at Jarvis) in 1990 and it lasted until 1997. In 1993, she opened the big fancy Young Thailand on Church Street at Adelaide. That business went fine for a while, but it was always too big and too stressful, Young says. "I always had problems with cooks. They wouldn't show up and I would have to hurry over and do it all myself. And the restaurant was too big, the rent was too expensive." Competition from the dozens of other Thai restaurants downtown didn't help.
Young threw in the towel and closed that Young Thailand late last year. Last month, she opened yet another Young Thailand, this time in an utterly unprepossessing block of Dundas Street west of Keele. Cheap rent, 100 seats and a kitchen she can personally control are what drew her to the Junction. She brought enough pretty Thai things from downtown to spruce up the place nicely, so that, having penetrated five metres into the long narrow room, one quickly forgets the charmlessness of Dundas West.
Funny thing: I learned to love pad Thai at Young's first restaurant, but at this new Young Thailand the pad Thai is the only thing I find bland. All else, though, bears the dazzling imprimatur of Wandee Young's own hands. Her misfortune is our good luck: She has been forced from the office back into the kitchen, where she now does all the cooking.
Her cold salad rolls are so far superior to any others in town that I shall be forever consigned to schlepping to the Junction: She stuffs them with a lot of perfectly cooked plump chicken, very lightly pickled carrot and young coriander sprouts. Instead of the usual sweet chili sauce, hers is a tamarind-based complexity of sweet and sour. Her shrimp rolls are ungreasy, highly flavoured delights scented with tree ear fungus, marinated glass noodles and carrot shreds. Young's green mango salad is more robustly flavoured than elsewhere, thanks to roasted cashews along with the usual peanuts, and more chicken. Her commitment to impeccably fresh mint and coriander doesn't hurt.
Papaya salad employs raw Chinese long beans as counterpoint to the bite of fresh chilies and garlic, and Chinese dried shrimps for deep flavour. Shredded lime adds big zing to the classic Thai sweetened vinegar dressing. Thai fried rice has more flavour than even an epicurean optimist expects from fried rice; thanks to fresh pineapple chunks, toasted cashews, green onions and big fat shrimp perfectly cooked, this could be a meal for $11.95.
But then one would have missed Young's garlic shrimp and her red curry duck. The latter is duck that she has roasted, then deboned and drowned in creamy coconut hot red curry, with baby eggplant and barely cooked grapes. The chunks of duck are big and tender, the eggplant firm, the sauce splendid. Her garlic shrimps are huge and perfectly cooked, and their dark sweet/sour tamarind sauce demands a spoon.
If you peel the new Dundas Street address stickers off the front of the Young Thailand menu, underneath you see the old address: 81 Church St. It's the same menu she had on Church Street, and the move may have, to her, symbolized failure.
But we're the winners here, because getting Wandee Young back in the kitchen puts the fun on the plate.
Cheers ...