The Loehdown

I eat a lot of Thai food. It’s easy to make substitutions, the dishes are usually made per order, the ingredients are fresh and flavorful and it’s usually reasonably priced. I have certain dietary restrictions, so eating out can be a definite challenge. As Nathan’s review said, Thai Kitchen is pretty standard fare/atmosphere. I enjoyed our Tom Kha Gai, however it was overfull of fresh button mushroom slices. I’m all for fresh ingredients, but they were raw and I prefer the straw mushrooms normally used. Also enjoyable are onions in this flavor combination but except for two stray pieces, it was oddly absent. The broth was rich with an excellent lemongrass flavor, however I have had better at several other places. We ordered this with three stars and unfortunately as a lot of thai restaurants count on the peppers added that sink to the bottom, the spicy was missing from this dish.

My entrée was the garlic chicken. It was that…garlic and chicken with cabbage. For ordering 3 stars, I was very disappointed as there was no heat at all to the dish. I thought the menu description also listed rice, but I was apparently incorrect. They lost points with me for not including rice with an entrée, which seems a normal assumption that they would have included it. Service lagged a bit for having only 5 tables full and three waitresses working. While our server was polite, she seemed to be rushing us through our orders. After seating she immediately asked us for a drink order without giving us time to peruse the menu—unfortunately an annoyance to me.

All in all, I’m sure we’ll go back since it’s 2 blocks from our apartment, but I’ll definitely be seeking out some of the other dishes (and possibly trying four to five stars) on the menu in hopes there may be a hidden treasure somewhere.

Smiley Face is one of those movies that in no way ever will be an Oscar contender. That being said, it is fun and fluffy, an excellent addition to the “stoner movie” genre.

The premise is simple—stoner girl accidentally eats roommate’s special cupcakes. From here, Jane F (played by the always delightful Anna Ferris) has a few simple errands to complete. As you might imagine, she gets somewhat distracted along the way, running into a quirky and hilarious cast of characters played by Jane Lynch, Danny Masterson, Adam Brody, and John Cho. Unfortunately the screen time of most of these characters is all too brief. Jim Krasinski plays Brevin, Jane’s roommate’s friend deeply in love with her. He becomes a hapless accomplice to Jane’s misguided journey. It’s hard to summarize without giving away the entire plot, so I’ll leave it as a recommendation for a night when you just want to watch something light and hilarious. RIYL: Dude Where’s My Car?, etc.

Thai Kitchen is not that much different from any other Thai restaurant you have previously visited. The dishware is a little less authentic, using colorful fiesta-ware style plates in place of what I would consider traditional Thai dishware. The setting is a little more well-lit than other establishments, but it could have been just about any other Thai restaurant otherwise.

The Tom Kha Gai soup we started our meal off with immediately made me think that Thai Kitchen was a level above other Thai restaurants I had visited. It was full of flavor, perfectly spiced, and had a wealth of mushrooms and chicken in it. I was blown away.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about the Bangkok Chicken. Their menu lists it as a “Thai Kitchen Specialty.” It consists of breaded chicken sauteed in a garlic sauce and garnished with basil. I hope that the regular chef was off that night, because the meal was absolutely bland and uninspiring. I could see the garlic, I could see the basil, I could see the spices, but I couldn’t taste it, anywhere.

I’m willing to give Thai Kitchen another shot based on the possibility the Tom Kha Gai showed, but I can’t recommend the Bangkok Chicken.

In honor of O.A.R. playing the Gorge this weekend with the Dave Matthews Band, I bring you a review of their latest musical effort: All Sides.

I was introduced to O.A.R. my freshman year in college, and they are the quintessential college rock; just a little off-beat to be mainstream, but still cool enough for the (non-indie/elitist) college kids. They are a band that you know that you’ve heard them, but you don’t know where. Lately, it’s most likely been in a commercial, as their song ‘Wonderful Day’ has been playing on recent Ford commercials, and ABC featured them for a benefit concert on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Their previous album, Stories of a Stranger, and the tour following, have been the biggest of their career, including a sellout of Madison Square Garden and radio hits ‘Love and Memories’ and ‘Heard the World’, and a tour with Dave Matthews Band.

As a follow-up to Stories of a Stranger, All Sides builds upon the well-developed sound, but it doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from Stories. The sound hasn’t progressed far enough to make it feel like the whole album, and if you played the two albums together with tracks shuffled, you’d be hard-pressed to separate them into two distinct albums.

A couple of tracks distinguish themselves, including the first single, ‘Shattered’ as well as ‘This Town’, but they are too far between to bring All Sides into the forefront as a wildly successful album. The sound across the album has less variance song-to-song than their previous efforts, which you could attribute to a refining of their sound or less creativity, depending on how you look at it.

As an introduction to O.A.R., this album works well, as it seems to have moved them more into the pop/rock genre than exclusively college rock, but previous fans may find the change unsettling.

If you’re expecting a variation of Polar Express, I hate to break it to you, but Pineapple Express is not a movie about a train to Hawaii. It is however, a comedy worth your theatre dollar, including popcorn.

The premise behind the movie is that Seth Rogen witnesses a murder committed by cop and a drug lord, and thus is on the run. Along the way Rogen is joined by his pot dealer, played by James Franco, and they enter a number of humorous situations, from living in the woods to a cop-car chase, and an epic fight in a secret abandoned government testing facility.

The mix of action-comedy in Pineapple Express is similar to that in spoof movies and comedy franchises such as Austin Powers, where it mocks the genre, but is also compelling in its own right. The scenes were well-choreographed and even brought some empathetic pain to the audience, and the requisite car-chase scene was filled with laughs and stunts.

If there was one downside to the movie it was probably the semi-romance storyline introduced with Rogen’s teenage girlfriend (she is 18, at least). After Rogen forces her family to flee their household, they are forgotten, leaving you wondering just where they went and what they did. Except for the comedy it brought in, Pineapple Express would be better-off without the added storyline. Also, if you’re not wild about drug references then you should definitely skip this movie, since it’s really only about two things: comedy and weed (the title of the movie gets its moniker from a “strain” of weed named Pineapple Express).

However, those are only minor glitches in the otherwise enjoyable Pineapple Express. While it is probably not going to win any Oscars, and with all the great movies that came out this summer it may get lost in the shuffle, Pineapple Expres is satisfactorily funny that you won’t feel as though you’ve wasted your money. If you have the extra 2 hours to spare, I’d recommend you see it.

Cafe Neo, Located in Northern Spokane, is looking to bring some big-city flavor to the little city.

While I was recently in Spokane (I currently live in Kirkland) I partook in the dining experience that is Cafe Neo. Located in a newly-built business strip across from Whitworth College, Cafe Neo is unassuming from the outside. However, when you enter you feel as though you’ve been transported to a location much more upscale than Northern Spokane. The interior is well-decorated with modern art and colors, an open seating area with 8-10 tables as well as another more secluded area with about 4 tables and a “bar” consisting of 3 low couches around a small table.

I started off just before the end of Happy Hour with a Tequila and Tonic which was well-priced for Patron. For appetizer we had Bruschetta with Pesto and Tomatoes (not the official menu name), which came out artfully arranged on a plate and drizzled with oil and vinegar. It tasted just as good as it looked.

For the main course I ordered the Idaho Rainbow Trout, which may not seem extravagant, but I hadn’t been across the mountains in a while and missed inland fish. The service was quick and my order arrived well ahead of what I would have expected from any restaurant. The fish came with roasted potatoes, and was smothered in an arugula and “brown-butter” sauce. The fish was excellently cooked, falling apart on the fork and not tasting like ordinary trout (this could also have been because it was from Idaho, but I attribute it more to the staff’s preparation). The brown-butter sauce went along perfectly with both the fish and potatoes, creating a wonderful flavor. The entire meal was a delight. Cafe Neo had lived up to what I had heard about it.

To finish things off, for dessert I had a fried banana and some blood-orange sherbet. Quite the interesting combo, but just as delicious as everything else I had experienced that night at Cafe Neo.

If you’re looking for a special night out or an elegant lunch and are able to get to north Spokane, check out Cafe Neo; you won’t be disappointed!