Off to Toa Payoh Central to run some errands and at the same time, have lunch with J. We ventured into the inconspicuous food alley from the main street that housed a row of F&B outlets.
This food alley is located on ground level behind the row of shops that are facing the Toa Payoh HDB Hub. It’s a little hidden away from the public eye but it’s not difficult to find. There, you can see various eateries serving all kinds of local and Asian cuisines. Not bad choices if you want more variety besides the usual hawker centre or coffeeshop fare.
Today, we are zooming in on Thai food from The Talad Drink & Thai Kitchen (formerly Chao Phraya Thai Kitchen). Some of you might have come across The Talad Drink at Artbox Singapore in April this year and/or might have seen people around you drinking these colourful bottled beverages. They were and still are a social media sensation. I mean, you don’t really find ombre rainbow drinks all the time, do you? ?
Drinks menu
No visit to a Thai restaurant will be complete without a Cha Yen ($3.50) or Thai Iced Milk Tea. I requested for my milk tea to be less sweet but was told that the tea had been pre-made and sweetened so it was not possible to customise the sugar level. Hence just as I expected, the Cha Yen turned out very sweet. So much so that I couldn’t even taste much tea flavour in the concoction even though they used my favourite Cha Tra Mue brand. #
The An Chan Peach ($3.80) or Peach with Butterfly Pea Tea came in pretty shades of blue, purple and yellow. To be honest, I ordered this not because I was fascinated with the flavour but because the whole thing (bottle inclusive) just looked so cool. Great that this could be made less sweet as they had to concoct from scratch on the spot. It was pretty refreshing and it wasn’t artificial-tasting at all even though the colours looked rather fake.
By the way, the bottles are yours to keep so feel free to turn them into your daily water bottles. ? I’m going to try concocting an ombre drink at home in this bottle one of these days. ?
These were what we ordered for lunch. Everything was polished in no time as the portion sizes weren’t big so 4 dishes like these would probably be just about sufficient for 2 small-to-normal eaters.
We couldn’t wait to dig into these Thai Grilled Pork Skewers ($10) or moo ping as we missed them so much since coming back from Bangkok. My first stick of meat was rather tough and chewy but my second one was pretty tender. The pork wasn’t marinated long enough so the flavour didn’t manage to penetrate the meat. Not much of a smoky flavour either. But we were contented as this was probably the closest thing we could get here in Singapore although they were a bit on the pricey side. #EverythingIsExpensiveInSingapore ☹️
Papaya salad ($5) was crunchy and slightly on the sweeter side. Pretty normal, nothing to shout about.
The Clear Tom Yum Seafood Soup ($6) wasn’t oily at all. It had a good balance of sourness and spiciness and was really piquant and appetising. Could even taste the galangal and fish sauce in the broth. There weren’t a lot of ingredients (squid, prawn, white fish) and the fish had a somewhat muddy taste too. But I still liked the broth as it really whetted the appetite.
[If you want to try making tom yum soup at home, check out my Seafood Tom Yum Soup Recipe.]
The Fried Garlic Pork ($6) was a tad disappointing as the meat was hard, tough and quite chewy. However, it did have a delicious marinade coupled with a lovely fragrance of garlic. Just too overdone for our liking.
Steamed rice is priced at $0.60 per plate. All prices shown here are NETT with no GST or service charge.
Overall, I thought the prices were still considered reasonable given that this was casual dining in the heartlands. However, if comparing the taste and quality of food from The Talad Drink & Thai Kitchen and Nakhon Kitchen (my favourite to-go place for Thai food), I still prefer the latter. The dishes here were decent but none of them really stood out. But I’m happy to come back for their beautiful coloured drinks that are super refreshing in this hot and humid weather. ??
5.30pm to 9.00pm daily