I'm going to lead off with my plea.
There are a metric ton of Thai restaurants everywhere now. I think my hometown even has a couple. Most of these are not family-owned. Of the ones that are, most of them aren't very good. And even the ones that are good aren't very authentic. Tara Thai is (now) one of the few family-owned Thai restaurants that's authentic and delicious. Like most restaurants of this category, they are kind of in an out of the way location and the crappy Thai places with brighter signs get more business. All Thai restaurants are not equal. If you live in my area, PLEASE GO TO THIS ONE.
Ok, that being said, there is sort of a checkered history between us and Tara Thai.
When it first opened, we were sort of miffed because they replaced what was perhaps the best Pho place ever to exist: Noodle 88. Eventually we wandered in after the anger subsided and found out that it was being run by Thai people and the food was delicious and authentic. We ate here at least once a week. The only thing I didn't like about it was that they were taking forever to get their liquor license, and we're talking months here.
We liked this place so much that we had Girlfriend Actual's birthday party there, feeding her entire family until they were near explosive internal pressure. A couple weeks later we got takeout from there and it tasted horrible. All the flavors were off. Hmmmm.
A week after that we decided to go in and eat and talk to the owners to see if something was up. To our amazement, the entire staff had been replaced by a new crew of people... and they weren't speaking Thai. Well, that explained it. We stopped going to Tara Thai.
Two years later, Girlfriend Actual need a place to host a meeting for her club, and decided to have it there since we knew it was probably deserted and they could accommodate a party of that size. After the meeting I got an excited call from Actual who said that there were new people in charge and that the food was even better than the first incarnation of Tara Thai.
We decided to investigate.
On our first visit back we discovered that the new owners were Thai/Isaan (Isaan is a large tribe of people from the mountains of Thailand who have apparently spent the last 1000 years coming up with delicious recipes). That explained everything.
And then I saw the specials menu hidden near the back of the restaurant.
As many of you may know, the title of my upcoming book is Give Me the Secret Menu. I absolutely love places that keep an off the official menu list of dishes that they are willing to cook for their more adventurous or traditional customers. And this place delivers.
Most of that menu may sound innocuous but it's really not. That dish up there that says "Fried bird" is actually a small, sparrow sized songbird skewered whole and deep fried.
I ordered the roasted meatballs. These are roasted over an open flame while being continuously basted with a slightly sweet sauce. So good.
After a couple more meals we returned with Work Girlfriend's crew for a grander banquet.
This is the heavenly wings appetizer. Tara Thai does a much more traditional version of the dish than most places. The average Thai place overstuffs the chicken wings until they are the size of an apple fritter. Tara Thai does it the traditional way, yielding a much more appetizing result.
Next course was som tum, or green papaya salad. Even though I ordered everything "farang mild" or "white people mild" it's really not possible to make this dish completely mild and have it taste right. More spice than some people were expecting, but it was very good. The chef at Tara Thai isn't shy with the fish sauce.
We also got tom kha gai, or chicken coconut and lemongrass soup. Most of us liked it. This is one of the kids enjoying it while Jason ponders the som tum. Remember the kid on the left, he's going to be a famous chef someday!
Pra raam, stir fry in peanut sauce. We always order this when there are people new to Thai food around, as it's the dish that most deem least offensive. We've done Thai twice for Actual's birthday, and both times we had a near riot as people fought over it. No such riot this time, as there was plenty for everyone.
Gang garee gai, coconut yellow curry with chicken. This was a specific request from Work Girlfriend. Pretty standard Thai fare available everywhere, although Tara Thai's version has a more complex profile than the stuff most other places serve. I have no idea why the curry is being pondered here. Perhaps the potatoes were making a face.
The star dish of the night: lahd naa. I guess you could loosely translate this as poured on the face. This dish is the Thai version of stroganoff, except without cream. Stir fried vegetables and beef in a thick gravy and poured on wide rice noodles. This dish is inexplicably missing from the menu at most Thai restaurants, although almost all of them will make it for you if you request it.
The mango sticky rice was the entire reason half of the party was there. Poor Naruto Girl thought we were going to have to go to San Francisco every time we wanted it. The usual combination of perfectly ripe mango and sticky rice in coconut sauce.
Along with the mango we got deep fried banana eggrolls with ice cream.
The owner was so amused by how much Naruto Girl was fiending over the mango that the kitchen was ordered to comp Naruto a whole new order to go.
If you need Thai food in the Sacramento area, I highly suggest you make the trip to Tara Thai. Unless you're one of those people that only get Pad Thai and satay, in which case you need to expand your Thai horizons a little :)
