I just lunched on leftovers from my new favorite neighborhood cheapie ethnic restaurant: Summer Noodle & Rice. Here are two pictures of Summer's uncommonly fresh Thai food. The first picture is panang curry beef ($7 plus a $1 surcharge for beef): rich and sweet as a panang should be. What was striking about this version is that the beef is somehow braised, rather than sliced and just cooked in the curry, and left in big, fatty chunks that verily fall apart when you approach with a fork. Delicious! The second picture is the tom kha kai, the famous coconut-milk-and-chicken soup of Thailand, which here is an exercise in authentic aromatics: can you see the chunks of galangal, next to the slivers of lemongrass, next to the kaffir lime leaf, next to the floating red Thai chili? This food is fantastic -- the curries are handmade (so attested the counter girl when asked by me), the vegetables are treated with care, and the spiciness is gutsy, authentic, and does not pander to the alleged sensitivity of the American palate! It's the Barack Obama of storefront Thai restaurants! I actually have yet to eat-in: the ambiance is design-on-the-cheap minimalism; for example, the seats are molded plastic with a hole right where your back wants to lean up against something. But, one thing is for certain, the food is YUMMY. [EDITOR'S NOTE: An important clarification, the Thai food is yummy. We've ordered two of the Chinese dishes on the menu -- beef and broccoli, and the lo mein with chicken -- and both were so bad they made us think that the cook's were like, literally, making up the recipes. The lo mein looked like off-the-shelf-from-Dominick's Prince brand linguini. I kid you not.]
SUMMER NOODLE & RICE, 1123 W. Granville Ave.; 773-761-8500. WIGB? I would go back and have -- like, six times in the past two weeks.
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