pawit royal thai

I love Thai food but haven't had any since I went to dinner with my former boss in Portland before we went west.  H asked a guy he works with, who did his LDS mission in Thailand, what Thai restaurants he recommended.  He said that there are several good ones in downtown, but if we didn't want to drive all the way back in, Pawit Royal Thai Cuisine in Holladay (1968 E. Murray-Holladay Road) was right up there with the best of them.

Housed in a former Pizza Hut, PRTC is warmly decorated in red, fuschia and gold, with a large fish tank in the center of the dining room.  They do have a bottled beer/wine license, although the beer/wine list is not included with the main menu.  I'm guessing if you ask, there's a separate menu but we just asked our server and winged it with a couple of Thai beers, Singha, a pale and slightly sweetish lager.

The menu is fairly long and it took us a little while to peruse it, finally deciding on an order of fresh and tasty Por Pia Sod (steamed spring rolls with veggies, shrimp and chicken) to start.  H had Pad Kee Mao ("drunken" chicken stir-fried with broccoli, bell peppers, mushrooms, carrots, Thai basil and Thai chilies) and I went with Pad Gra Pow (beef stir-fried with garlic, Thai green bans (?), onions, bell peppers, Thai chilies, and Thai basil), both served with sticky rice.  Despite their seeming similarities, our dishes were very different.  H's was not spicy at all while mine ... ha!  When I ordered it, our waitress said to me, "Spicy?" and I thought she was telling me that this was a spicy dish.  So I said, yes, good, spicy.  After she'd left, H shook his head and said that she was asking me how spicy I wanted it.  Oops.  Mine came really, really spicy.  Not inedible, but enough to make me sweat a little bit.  As we were eating, Pawit himself came out of the kitchen to say hello to some other diners and on his way back, paused at our table to say hello and ask me if it was spicy enough.  Oh yes, thank you!

We will definitely be going back to Pawit Royal Thai Cuisine.  I've got my eye on the Som Tum (green papaya salad) or possibly a foray into the noodle dishes.  Hooray for Thai!