A EULOGY FOR THE PEANUTS OF THAI EXPRESS By Nikko Ong Thai Express is a chain like no other, unparalleled in generosity, uncontested in rapidity, and unremarkable in menu design. My first and favorite one was the small location that nestled behind the Le James bookstore at the intersection of Sherbrooke and University. They served me my heaping plate of Pad Thai with chicken on a piece of styrofoam so flimsy it cracked underneath the weight of tangy, soy-sauce dripping flat rice noodles laced with bean sprouts and fried tofu and green onions. A little soggy, a little oily, a little sweet, and a lot delicious, Pad Thai was the best thing they served. cooks or better ingredients, but the one thing that made Thai Express That restaurant and its flagship special for me was the condiment dish disappeared one day when I bar at the end of the guide rails. wasn't looking, and I've mourned it ever since. Since then, I've been Forming a straight line from the comforted in the loving arms of cashier to the plexiglass-shielded the Eaton Center Thai Express prep station to the wok burners, the and the Thai Express under the guide rails lead you to gold: the peaScotiaBank theater, which both nuts of Thai Express. They sit in a provide offerings of considerable square aluminum hotel pan alongquality. With them, I've experi- side gummy bottles of Sriracha and enced managerial changes and cut-up limes that have seen better brand-level shifts to compostable days. plates, paper straws, and smaller portions, but I'll never forget that Sometimes there would be little first location. plastic containers to put the conOther joints in Montreal have amazing Pad Thai, perhaps some even better than Thai Express. They might have more skilled 21
Source: thaiexpressfranchise.com do with a plastic fork. The condiment bar was a little slice of paradise where you could transform your plate from a delicious, albeit homogenous, pile of food to a sparkling and professionally-plated paragon of haute cuisine. The mixture of red chili, palm sugar, fish sauce, and tamarind paste blend into a darker sauce, which needs visual pops of life to epitomize what a Pad Thai could, and should, be.
For me, that entails a drizzle of bright red Sriracha atop artfully diments in, and sometimes there placed limes that accentuate the wouldn't. There might be serving mounded curves of the rice nootongs for customers to grab their dles. It means a generous scattering aging lime quarters and crushed of bleached peanuts to bring out the peanuts, but oftentimes you'd make beautiful hazel tones of the underJanuary 2021
