14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
A packed menu (15 pages long) but few
enticements at Long Beach Thai Cuisine
Review and photos by
THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
MOUTH@COASTWEEKEND.COM
FACEBOOK.COM/MOUTHOFTHECOLUMBIA
A
rriving with a thud in a three-
ring binder, the menu at Long
Beach Thai Cuisine is 15
pages long.
Fifteen pages.
That’s a North Coast record.
Contained within those 15 pages
are something like 115 choices,
though there are but a handful of
lanes: noodles, curries, fried rices,
sautés, soups, specials and so on.
The menu gets its sprawl in mi-
nutia. A veggie here, a sauce there,
ad infinitum. It’s too much to keep
in your head at once.
So good luck deciding what to
order. And try to keep your head
from exploding when you ask for
recommendations and receive the
dreaded response: “Everything is
good.”
Most of what I tried ended up
simply serviceable. The bedrock of
flavors at LBTC — of fish sauces,
garlic, soy, ginger, coconut, Thai
chilis and so on — fulfills the
Thai’s basic promise but stop short
of surprising or exceptional.
After flipping back and forth
between menu pages for far too
long, I went with my Thai standby;
indeed it doesn’t take long for my
coconut curry itch to need scratch-
ing.
The chicken in the Panang
Curry ($10.95) came as flat, card-
board-thin, dry strips. The veggies
were a little dull and the portion
middling. But the creamy broth
subdued my craving. It would keep
the curry wolves at bay for at least
a few more days.
Those same thin, dry insub-
stantial strips of unseasoned
chicken made their way into the
Fresh Rolls ($6.50), wrapped with
iceberg lettuce, a few shards of
LONG BEACH
THAI CUISINE
Rating:
1003 Pacific Ave. N.
Long Beach, Wash.
98631
360-642-2557
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
everday
Price: $ – Dishes average $12
Service: Both inscrutable and
brightly charming
Vegetarian / Vegan Options:
Plenty
Drinks: Premixed Thai iced
teas and coffees, hot teas, soda
(no alcohol)
KEY TO STAR RATING SYSTEM
Poor
Below average
Worth returning
Very good
Excellent, best in region
Happy Duck
carrots and a tiny prawn tail inside
gummy rice paper. Flat on their
own, a sweet and spicy peanut
sauce pepped them up.
Most entrées at LBTC are
available on the 5-star scale of
spiciness. A devotee of foods that
might make you sweat, I was
most content around a 3-star level,
which made me straighten up my
spine and dab my reddened cheeks.
It was pretty intense for middle-of-
the-road. Indeed, I witnessed some
diners being bowled over by the
heat, their tongues hanging out of
their mouthes between slugs of ice
water.
After some prodding for
recommendations, the Lard Nah
Peak Gai Lao Dang
was proffered. With broccoli, the
basic beefy gravy included tinges
of soy and sweetness. I ordered it
“monster,” which for $13 instead
of $10.95 included “a larger
portion of meats.” Near the size
of cardboard dominoes, the flat,
wide slices of beef were like the
chicken: body-less.
While LBTC’s meats generally
missed their mark, the deep-fried,
spicy chicken wings — aka the
Peak Gai Lao Dang ($7) — hit the
bullseye with a brittle, crispy crust
sealing in tender, juicy flesh. (The
wings came with a house sauce
that was another corn syrup ca-
tastrophe. Ask for something else.)
Of everything I tried at LBTC, the
wings is the dish I’d most likely
order again.
From the upper end of the
menu — the pages dubbed “spe-
cialties” mostly feature spendier
proteins like salmon, halibut and
the unholy combinations of too
many different meats — I chose
the Happy Duck ($16). It came
smothered in a shiny slick of salty,
sweet oil and beneath a hailstorm
of diced garlic. There was too
much sauce by half. Underneath, a
thin, crispy, deep-fried crust gave
way to a thicker layer of viscous,
shivering fatty skin. The leg meat
was scrappy, but the breast offered
a few almost entrancing bites. The
dish hinted at what it could become
Fresh Rolls
were it given more refinement and
development.
Which is pretty much LBTC in
a nutshell: in need of some serious
spring cleaning. I’d start by cutting
pages of dishes from the bursting
menu, then distilling, focusing on
and elevating what’s left. CW