Back to Pestle Rock

I pondered whether to submit yet another review of Pestle Rock, the outstanding Isan Thai restaurant in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, but a couple of unusual dishes (unusual for us who live thousands of miles from Thailand) tipped the balance in favor of it. The original post was a lunchtime meal; the other a post about their noodle soups. I’ll just get down to the two dishes, both of which were listed as specials on the blackboards.

The special noodles were Mee Ka Ti (☆☆☆), a very popular lunchtime meal in Thailand. It gets thickened by a combination of coconut milk, green onions and palm sugar. Tamarind added its unique tartness, earthiness and slightly smoky taste. Despite its “one-chile” rating, these savory-sweet noodles were surprisingly spicy, which wasn’t derived from any visible chiles. The noodles tended to clump together, but this is the nature of vermicelli-thin rice noodles bathed in a thick sauce. Bean sprouts and shreds of egg and chicken rounded out the flavors and textures.

More a salad than entrée, Mu Kham Wan (☆☆½) featured grilled pork, cut into small pieces and dressed with a vinaigrette of lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, garlic and chiles, mixed with minced cilantro and mint and slivered red onions. Accompanying the salad were crudités of raw carrot and cucumber. Though the pork was flavorful, it was well past tender, the only defect in an otherwise delicious dish.

The menu item was one we enjoyed before, Khao Phad Phu (☆☆☆½), (described in the first post), one of the best fried rices anywhere, bar none. It also happens to star Dungeness crabmeat, a favorite among seafood lovers on the West Coast.