True Thai

2627 E Franklin Ave
Minneapolis, MN
612-375-9942
http://www.truethairestaurant.com/

Category: Thai

Rating (Scale 1-10, with 10 being the highest):
Food: 7
Service: N/A (takeout)
Ambience: N/A (takeout)

Recommendation: Very Good. True Thai is another great Thai restaurant part of an already long list of distinguished Thai options in the Twin Cities (Chiang Mai Thai, King & I, Gangchen, Amazing Thailand to name a few).

Our Take-out food theme over Memorial Day weekend continued with True Thai (we had friends visiting and with their 2 young boys, doing takeout was more practical). Located on Franklin Avenue close to the Cedar-Riverside area, True Thai is close to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the U of M campus.

The menu is pretty large and has many varieties of Appetizers (including Sweet Purple Yam), Soups, Salads (including Crispy Catfish Salad and Laab), Curries, Wok Fried dishes, Noodles, and Fried Rice. The Green Papaya Salad ($6.50) was very refreshing and crunchy with the crisp green papayas, tomatoes, cilantro, lime, and spices. However, the flavors were too mild and didn’t capture the confluence of sweetness and spiciness that normally accompany this salad. The Sweet Green Curry with Chicken ($9.95), a traditional commonly available Thai dish was spiced to order, fragrant, and had good flavors. We tried both the Tofu Pad Thai ($8.95) and the Chicken Pad Thai ($9.95), classic noodle dishes and found both to our liking.

The place gets really packed on weekends so call ahead and reserve a table.

$$. Most dishes are under $15. Parking on side streets. Closed on Sundays.

Update (October 18, 2008) – We went back to True Thai and did takeout again – our friends who visited from Chicago on Memorial Day loved this place and were visiting and wanted to get food from True Thai once again. We really liked the Pad Thai (something Nick isn’t a big fan of) at True Thai. Unfortunately the restaurant made a mistake and made one of them mild, which made this dish pretty bland and uninteresting, but the nicely spiced one was fabulous. The Bangkok Crispy Sweet Beef had a nice crispy, chewy exterior and a sweet lingering finish. However, the dish that made a lasting impression was the Crispy Catfish Salad. This salad is a nice alternative to the Green Papaya Salad as it has similar flavors. The fried chunks of fish were completed nicely by the citrus aromas of the dressing - throw in pieces of mango and crunchy veggies and you have a dish you simply can’t pass up. On the other hand, the Wok Fried Chilis and Holy Basil with Chicken was unimpressive – King and I Thai has set a high bar for this dish and True Thai’s wasn’t even close. Our two complaints were that finding pieces of chicken was a treasure hunt in the sea of vegetables, and the flavors were subdued. We’d recommend skipping it.