My Top 10 Personal Favourites from Cha Thai

The distinctive taste of the food we sampled at Cha Thai last Friday night lingered in my taste buds. As I am typing this blog entry, I can't help but drool all over again. I have to warn you ahead that as you scroll down and look at my resized but unedited food photographs (thank God for DSLR's), you may feel a sudden surge of hunger pang so hurry up, go grab something to eat before you continue reading. 

As I always disclose, I am no connoisseur when it comes to food. I do wish at times that I have the gift of tongue which most professional food bloggers have. They never fail to make me drool not just by their lickable hashtagged foodporn but by how they intricately describe in food expert lingo each item on the menu that they tried.

As a lifestyle-slash-mommy blogger here, I completely rely on my quite-easy-to-please taste buds to come up with a food related feature so please bear with my blabbering a.k.a lame food descriptions and concentrate on my drool-worthy photos. I won't dig into details about the food's taste, texture and so on but I am going to rate the food according to my own liking, and some, my kids' and the hubby's preference. 

The food spread laid on our table that night were way too generous and glorious. Luckily, I was wearing something stretchable. Yes you guessed it right, I was well prepared to indulge! Haha. But let me tell you this. I am not exaggerating when I say all the food we had the pleasure devouring spelled D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S, but if you ask me which ones are my favourites, here's my top 10 list: 

1) GREEN MANGO SALAD

This green mango salad brought back fond memories from my childhood. As a kid, I used to devour green mangoes in all its sour glory. At times, I pick them fresh from our very own mango trees in our backyard and munch on them right after washing and peeling. Apologies if I just made you drool but before I mislead you, this dish isn't too sour yet I still loved it because the slightly sweet dressing made it even more palatable.

I have to warn you though that its spiciness level is 4 out of 5, 5 being the spiciest. If you cannot tolerate spicy food, you may skip this. Having said that, my spicy food tolerance is not that high too but I was able to have 2 spoonfuls of it. All thanks to my dad who familiarized my taste buds with spicy chili since young. I'd recommend that you start your meal with this as it guarantees to whet your huge appetite.

2) Signature Tiger Prawn 'Panang' Curry

Just look at those big fat tiger prawns (insert triple heart-eyed emoticon here) bathed in that rich, creamy and oh so sinful curry sauce!!! (Is there a drooling emoticon yet?) Need I say more why it made to my top hits?

3) Thai Curry Soft Shell Crab

#iPhoneOnly

I have a thing for soft shell crab, and so are my husband and my teenager. I may have helped myself with huge serving of this one. I just couldn't stop devouring it!

Let me sidetrack again a bit and tell you a funny story why I don't have a photo of the Thai curry soft shell crab by itself from my big camera. I kept shooting the moment we arrived at Cha Thai premises around 7pm. Few drinks and dishes served later, to my horror, I realized don't have a memory card inserted in the camera. Laugh die forgetful me!!! Hahaha! The camera did "remind me" every single time I clicked BUT I only noticed it around 20 clicks later. #epicfail

4) Crispy Prawn Cake

I enjoyed this one way too much too because I keep giving myself an excuse that I am eating on behalf of my teenager who loves anything crispy! I would have enjoyed it more dipped in sweet and spicy sauce but it made to my top 10 list because the crispy prawn cake was so good even when eaten on its own. I bet even my fussy-eater pre-school boy would love devouring it without dipping in the sauce.

5) Creamy Crab Roll

#iPhoneOnly

I have a hunch my teenager and I would fight to polish the whole serving of this in 60 seconds! Okay, that was pure exaggeration but you get the drift. (Insert tongue licking emoticon here.)

6) Premium Giant Tiger Prawns Claypot Glass Noodles

#iPhoneOnly because the ones I took from my big camera turned out crappy

I could have eaten more of the juicy tiger prawns and flavourful glass noodles if this was served to us earlier. I may have not divulge here yet but I am a huge fan of glass nooodle dishes especially the ones with seafood.

7) Tom Yum Vegetarian Dumplings

Tom yum has got to be my all-time favourite Thai dish. I used to complain how it is too spicy for my liking but after starting to request less spicy version, I have grown to love it and my spicy tolerance ha gone up quite a bit too. It came to the point where I was like a pregnant mama who drags her hubby to a Thai restaurant just to satisfy her craving for spicy tom yum soup.

8) Saute Eggplant with Basil

I love eggplant be it mixed in a salad, grilled, fried, steamed or sauteed like this dish. I've never had an eggplant dish with basil before and was surprised that basil actually goes well with eggplant.

9) Charcoal Toast

This is the typical example of: "Don't judge the food by its appearance". I've never expected myself to enjoy and appreciate this. The charcoal toast is so crisp, you won't realize how you keep popping a cube dipped in either the Thai milk tea or pandan sauce (my personal preference) into your mouth. You know what they say, "Once you pop, you can't stop?" If my tummy wasn't about to explode from all the generous serving of food we tried, I could have popped 5 cubes or more into my mouth! It's that addicting!

10) Mountain Milo

It's more like a volcano complete with its crater but this actually supposed to mimic Mt Everest. Look at that dripping milk and generous Milo powder sprinkled all over the shaved ice mountain! It deserves a triple heart eyes and tongue licking emoticon!

Here are the other dishes we tried which were equally delicious but did not make it to my Top 10 list:

Lemongrass Prawn Salad

Garlic Chicken with Bird's Chili

Crab Roe Paste with Crispy/Fresh Vegetable

Green and Red Ruby

Sweet Corn Herbal Jelly, Melon Sago, Summer Potato

If you are willing to pay more for quality Thai food and unforgettable gastronomic experience, I highly recommend Cha Thai which is conveniently located right across Telok Ayer MRT Station exit B. Their food's price tag were brought about by great quality ingredients and seafood that are sourced locally from kelong for freshness. Meat is sous vide to achieve  tenderness, dips, curries, pastes, sauces, gravy, milk teas, refreshing drinks, and all are made from scratch. Moreover, their portions are really HUGE, it's meant to be shared with family and friends. 

About Cha Thai's founder and Chief Chef:

Leah's strong culinary passion got her admitted to schools in France and Thailand, which explaines why she is able to marry the best of East and West, adapting the West's technology while keeping to the East's traditions, to bring Thai food to another level. 

The bubbly founder had no qualms about sharing the real definition of 'authentic'. "Historically, authentic Thai food was really just cooking with palm or coconut sugar and coconut milk, and this was dated few hundreds years ago, the true blue authentic Thai food.

Times have changed and food evolved, if we continue to cook Thai food this way, no one will want to eat Thai food . Therefore, the Thais have to change with times, fine tune their cooking methods to suit the modern palate", shared Leah.

"The quality of Cha Thai's food is the result of premium quality ingredients along with traditional (not authentic) recipes cooked with modern techniques, to bring out another dimension in the taste of Thai, so our customers experience the best of Fine Thai Food", Leah continued.

CHA THAI
80 Telok Ayer Street
#01-01 Far East Square
Singapore 048466
Call +65 6636 3696
Email: info@chathaisg.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chathaisgInstagram: @chathaisg