Banana Leaf

The Thai restaurant in Dawning Center (where Cisco office is located)... fascinating and unexpected decour, kind of Waikiki-like. Service not so fast and food mediocre to ok. The food is also more Chinese than Thai really...

They started us with water that tasted like it was from a park fountain. The tea took a while but better. The closest to pad thai we could get were Thai rice noodles, which were a bit bland. Eggplant was good, and the green beef curry was great, and we went to town on that. We also went with the small appetizer plate, which generally was ok except we didn't finish it since it came last and we overordered (for three).

215rmb for the whole meal of four dishes, tea and tax.

Dawning Center, 500 Hong Bao Shi Road, 2F
红宝石路500号2楼

Lotus Thai

Dinner with Yell

Trendy Thai place. It was nice to sit on sidewalk with yummy drinks. I was somewhat limited by Yell's 'no meat, no spicy' but still had pretty good spring rolls, pad keemow and vegetables.

www.lotusthaisd.com

906 Market Street, San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 595-0115

Lemongrass

August 2008
Dinner

Great Thai place near Lizzie's on Polk between Green and Union. Their Tom Yum Gai soup was fantastic, spicy enough but not too much with chicken and mushrooms. Got quite full off the chicken and spinach with peanut sauce and even brought some home. Quite reasonably priced for dinner and bottle of wine, about $35 each.

www.lemongrassSF.com

2348 Polk Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 346-1818

Longrain

April 2008
Dinner with Tristen and Beck

Wonderful Asian restaurant in Surry Hills, Sydney. They don't take reservations so unless you get in at 6:30pm, expect to wait at least an hour at the bar. But they have incredible cocktails and you can be seated (and fed) in the waiting bar area so not a bad deal.

DELICIOUS Thai Bloody Mary, best I have ever had I think -- perfect amount of spicy and vegetable and alcohol. Yummy lychee drink also. Expensive, drinks are about $20 each, though totally worth it.

Definitely get the beetle leaf with shrimp, delicious. As are their speciality egg nets, very light and tasty. Also got a wonderful wagyu beef stir fry.

http://www.longrain.com/

85 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills, NSW Australia 2010
+61 2 9280 2888

Krung Thai

Thursday, December 6, 2007
Dinner with Japan

Super authentic and yummy Thai food. Alot of their dishes are super spicy. Fantastic soup (Tom Yum Gai I think), and their sweet sticky rice with mango dessert is amazing.

There is also an original Krung Thai down the street, but New one is better.

580 N. Winchester Blvd., near Forrest Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128
(408) 248-3435

Banana Leaf

Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Cisco MBA Lunch

YUM, super good and often spicy Malay and Thai cuisine. Had some Rothi bread to start, and they brought us all this spicy broth with celery. I had red curry with prawns with rice. All in $12 per person including tax & tip, good lunch specials. You can make a reservation online if you have more than six in the party, and they are pretty militant about it. Loong lines if you go for lunch otherwise.

182 Ranch Drive, Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 719-9811

Osha Thai

Friday, October 26, 2007
Birthday dinner with Lowell, Nadim, Eric, Shan and Karen

Osha Thai was a nice accidental find in SoMa before the birthday party at Mr Smiths. We called an hour before for a reservation and showed up 15m late. Only with Nadim's magic did they let us sit down -- highly recommend reservations and showing up on time. Super trendy fusion Asian Thai place.

Great cocktails, I loved the lycheetini myself. Appetizers of spring rolls and seared wasabi ahi tuna were quite good. We went family style on the rest of the meal -- ginger chicken, pineapple fried rice which was one of my favorites, curry dish, spicy eggplant with beef, and a shrimp dish.

149 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 278-9991

Yukol Place

Friday, September 7, 2007
Dinner with GSBers

2380 Lombard Street, San Francisco, CA 94123
(415) 922-1599