Put some heat to the damp autumn cold

Posted by Andrew

I was in Winnipeg for another Saturday daytrip. It was cool, the air was very clammy, it was raining, and I had a grumbling empty stomach by 5PM. I had to find myself some dinner that'd help me warm up quick, and what better way than to warm up to Thai food? Back to Osbourne Village I went...

My family and I couldn't try Sukhothai on Canada Day (it was closed for the holiday), but now at least the second attempt worked for me. The restaurant is fairly small yet cosy, the gold-coloured tablecloths and napkins reminding me of the gold-gilded temples found in Thailand and other parts of SE Asia. Unfortunately I was dining on my own, and Thai, like Chinese, is one type of cuisine where it's actually better to dine with more people as you can sample several more dishes together.

Two of my favourite Thai dishes are tom yam goong, a spicy shrimp soup, and pad thai, a rice noodle dish stir-fried in a subtly sweet and spicy red sauce, and those were what I ordered for dinner. In spite of ordering a "small" soup, the bowl of soup that greeted me could easily feed two people at once! Size notwithstanding, the soup was very good, if not a bit more informal in presentation. Aside from the taste, you definitely can tell that the chef added ginger and lemongrass to the soup with those pieces visible in the soup. There was a good amount of vegetables in it, and the shrimp were plump mouthfuls. The soup definitely warmed my belly in no time at all.

I thought the pad thai was flavoured pretty decently with only a subtle hint of sweetness and a faint spicy kick. The raw bean sprouts on the side gave the dish a refreshing crunch, and it just wouldn't be pad thai without chopped peanuts sprinkled on top of the noodles. The portion size of this dish was definitely more manageable; another dish would've had to have been ordered had a second person been eating with me.

One neat thing about Sukhothai compared to a few other Thai restaurants I've visited so far (and they've mostly been in Ontario) is that they let you decide the spicyness factor on a scale of 10. 3-4 tends to be the "average", usually providing the right amount of kick to the dishes. 1 is the mildest, while 10... well, let's just say I won't be going there anytime soon!

Name: Sukhothai
Address: 191 Osborne St., Winnipeg, MB
Cuisine: Thai
Price Range: Dinner $15-$30
Accessible: Yes