Kin Shop

Dinner with the family: Mr. M&P, Ms. Pastry Chef, Mrs. Green M&M, and Mr. HP Sauce. We spent the night in the city and celebrated with food. And lots of it. Our first meal that weekend was at Kin Shop. I have previous enjoyed Chef Harold Dieterle's Perilla and The Marrow. Kin Shop is a contemporary Thai restaurant with a casual feel. The dishes are all made to share so it's a great group place.

To start, we had the lobster summer roll ($16), fried broccoli and Chinese sausage ($12), stir fry of aquatic vegetables ($9), and fried pork and crispy oyster salad. While everything was delicious, I personally enjoyed the stir fry of vegetables and pork and oyster salad the most. The former for the simplicity and the latter for the wonderful textural and flavor contrasts.

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Lunch Week 29: Pad See Ew

So every Sunday, I head over to the kitchen to whip up a big batch of food for lunch the next week. Yes, I brown bag. And I almost always do it every week unless I become too busy to even buy cold cuts from the deli. I do it for several reasons being health, finance, and laziness. Now, you may think that spending hours on a day off to prep and cook five meals at once is hardly lazy. But let me remind you, I hate it when the time comes to decide what to eat for lunch every day. I work in Midtown so the choices are endless. My problem, the more choices, the harder it is for me. So it's much easier for me to have my lunch ready and already decided.



So my lunch for the week: Pad See Ew

Who knew that Pad See Ew was so simple to make with such little ingredients? But you know what they say about simple recipes, right? Well, it's even more difficult to perfect since there's very little one can do to hide mistakes. You really only have one shot to do it right. So while I was excited to make this sweet salty rice noodle dish with pork and Chinese broccoli, I was also a bit scared to screw it up big time. Lucky for me, Mr. M&P is much less critical than I am.

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A Splash of Thai

If you're a regular reader here, you would know that when I lived in Hell's Kitchen, there was plenty of Thai places to choose from. Although, I recently found out that my favorite place is now closed?! Is this what happens when I leave the area? Sigh... Anyway, one of the best things about living in NYC is that the variety of cuisines and restaurants is endless. Especially with Asian cuisines. Man o man did I love eating types of Asian food. But now that I'm in NJ, good Asian food is much more difficult to come by. Luckily there's a good Asian grocer not too far away so that I may make my own food all the time. But when I just want to eat out, the choices are a bit more limited.

A Splash of Thai boasts a pretty sign near the Westfield train station. It's hard to miss them. They advertise pretty good lunch deals but we were there for dinner. As a group of 4, we sat near the window and commented about the atmosphere. Although there were very few tables occupied (it was a weekday), the service was still friendly and the place looked modern and clean.



We decided to share a bunch of plates as this was our first time there. Also, a couple of the guests claimed not to be too hungry. We started with the Thai spring rolls ($8) with glass noodles, vegetables, and a sweet peach sauce. These were meh for me. In general spring rolls aren't that good to me. Most places just don't know how to make them really good. Either the filling sucks or the wrapper isn't crispy. Or both.

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