San Bruno Thai Temple Review

Some of us headed to San Bruno's Thai Temple (Wat Mongkolratanaram) for its Sunday lunch. Aside from one curry and the kanon krok coconut dessert, we weren't happy with our meal. Still, it was a fun experience. The San Bruno temple is several factors smaller in terms of food selection and probably an order of magnitude smaller in terms of crowd size. This lead to a very casual atmosphere in which we could watch the food being made and chat with the cooks. The later, however, was difficult because most of them didn't speak English. (In contrast, the Berkeley Thai Temple gets so many non-Asians that everyone manning a counter speaks passable non-English, but it's so busy it's impossible to simply chat.)

We tried most of items they offered: 

• Spring rolls (deep fried) with sweet and sour sauce. Perfectly fine.

• Papaya salad. We ordered medium spiciness and it was way too spicy for us. I have no problem eating a full meal of Sichuan food without any mild dishes to tone the spices down, but I couldn't finish my share of this dish. (I think they put in five peppers? Maybe get two next time?) I took the large amount of leftovers home and found I drank half a gallon of water while eating half a plate of papaya salad. Jeez. Anyway, it was neat watching them make the salad, crushing ingredients with a mortar and pestle, tossing it, tasting it, adding more ingredients, watching the other women come by and taste, then make oodles of corrections (adding more sugar, fish sauce, mixing it with some salad from her bowl, etc.).

• Pork salad. Didn't excite us. Mostly ground pork with tossed with green onions, red onions, parsley, and ample salt and pepper. Served at room temperature.

• A banana leaf filled with a salmon and cabbage casserole/quiche. Eating shredded salmon is somewhat weird. Most of us thought it was okay, though the one person that didn't grow up eating casserole really didn't like it.

• "Pumpkin" curry with chicken. Easily the best dish. A light and tasty yellow-ish curry sauce tossed with some form of squash -we debated what kind-.

• Beef curry. Perhaps because of some herb, one person not inaccurately described this as tasting "like dirt."

• Kanon krok. These are effectively coconut pancakes the size of silver dollars. Made in a special machine, the outside gets a little crisp while the inside remains mushy. People enjoyed them, describing them as a little like a creme brulee, with an internal texture of rice pudding (without the kernels of rice).

The items we saw but didn't try were: some sort of dumplings (chive), sticky rice with mango, some sort of pancake that vaguely resembled green onion pancakes, a salmon curry, a mixed vegetable dish, and a whole fish. (I'm not sure the latter could be ordered or if it was just being prepped for something.) 

The total was under ten dollars per person. We had leftovers of all but the pumpkin curry and kanon krok, though no one was excited by them.

Original Announcement

Most of you have been to the Berkeley Thai Temple for its Sunday lunch. What you may not know is that the peninsula has its own Thai Temple in San Bruno that also does Sunday lunch. It's supposedly quite a bit smaller (in both crowd and selection) and with better food. It should be a fun outing. O and I are planning to go, aiming to arrive around noon.

If you plan to come, please tell me so we can wait to eat for you. And if you want/need to carpool, you should definitely say something.

310 Poplar Ave. (near Crystal Springs Road), San Bruno

Comments from Other Attendees

I revisited the Thai Temple a year and a half later, on April 13, 2008.

When I arrived at 1pm, most of the dishes were nearly gone and some were sold out completely. (The papaya salad, which was the reason I went, was gone.)

I had two pretty satisfying dishes. One was a stir-fry of fish, green beans, and something pickled (daikon?). The other was thin red curry with the main ingredient being a green vegetable with shoots that looked kind of like kang kung. The curry also had fish. This dish was decidedly spicy, and heady with coconut milk.

-mark

I revisited the Thai Temple on May 4, 2008 and ordered a papaya salad. It was good--a nice blend of flavors--, though was too spicy for me. I asked for only two chile peppers. Perhaps I need even fewer? In addition to lots of papaya and the chile peppers, the salad contained tomato chunks, peanuts (or cashews?), dried (?) shrimp, long beans, garlic, and fish sauce. There may've been more things; those are just ones I noticed.

-mark

Feel free to add remarks here.