Review: Barn Thai

Yep, yet another lunch post. But don't worry, this will be the last one for the week. I'm going up to Tahoe with Justyn and Angel for some gambling and craziness! I'll post about that later though.

I picked Justyn up at work and we were off to find lunch. This time, no research was done and we actually had no idea where we were going to go. At first I suggested Rene Rose Island for some Philipino food, but Justyn said it was too greasy. Instead he suggested that we try that Thai place in that shopping center. Which one do you ask? Barn Thai. It's located in a strip mall with a bunch of different restaurants of different ethnicities. They've got Mexican, Japanese, Cuban, pizza, and Philipino (different than Rene Rose Island).

We didn't get to lunch until 12:00pm so the place was bustling. There wasn't a line to get in and we were promptly seated but almost all the tables had customers chatting and scarfing down their lunches. As expected, Justyn ordered off of their lunch menu which comes with some sort of curry, rice, eggroll and rice. Just as I expected him to order a yellow curry extra spicy, I ordered noodles. I almost got their pad see ew, but instead got pad thai as that is the safer bet. Suprisingly, my noodles came with soup and an eggroll as well. I also told the waitress that I didn't want any carrots or bean sprouts (so what?).

Justyn made sure that the waitress got his order correctly. He said over and over "Extra extra hot please". I told the waitress that he means "extra extra spicy". He also mentioned that he could take the heat. The waitress didn't bat an eye. She punched our order into some hand held device and left to get our soups. At first sip, the soup was extremely flavorful. A bit sweet, a bit sour with a tiny bit of spice. I took a couple more sips since it was so good, but after about 5 sips, the soup turned out to be not so good. Normally these vegetable soups are clear with a hint of yellow/green. This soup was cloudy and upon tasting it, it seemed like they added a lot of sugar. I expect the natural sugars from the vegetables to flavor the soup, but no such luck this time. We left our unfinished soups to the side until the waiter took them away.

About 1o-15 minutes later, our entrees arrived. I gave Justyn my one shrimp from the pad thai (I don't really like them). They got both of our orders correct to the "T". My pad thai only had a couple slivers of carrot (they probably almost forgot no carrot). Justyn's curry turned out to be very spicy just the way he likes it. I took a small bite of beef which was very tender, indicating that the curry had been simmered for a long time. It was so spicy that I almost couldn't swallow it. I manned up and immediately followed it with some water to cool down my tongue. I asked Justyn if it was good enough for him and he said he couldn't tell yet. 5 bites into lunch, he said "Oh yeah, it's spicy enough." Cool!

We chatted about the season finale of Lost and other mundane things while we chowed down. Lunch was pretty good and this restaurant far exceeded my expectations. In fact, every place in this little strip mall is decent and perfect for the business lunch crowd. Price wise, it's not bad at all either. With tax and tip the bill came out to $18.20 for two people. Give this place a try, I can at least tell you that I wasn't disappointed.

Barn Thai

921 E Duane Ave.

Sunnyvale, CA 94085

Website: http://www.barnthai.com/

Phone: (408) 732-3319