Pin Kaow
It had been a few years since I’d been to the original Pin Kaow (there now are three). I remembered the food as pretty good, the atmosphere as regulation strip-center-nothing-special, clean but as basic as it gets. And so it was that when a friend and I entered for lunch recently, I initially thought I was in the wrong place.
Lots of restaurants renovate, although the degrees to which they do so (and whether or not said renovation includes a thorough cleaning) are widely variable. But I have to say that in more than 25 years at this, I’ve never seen a restaurant that has renovated as thoroughly as this one.
You still park in a strip-center lot (which always has its pluses, in terms of convenience), and you still enter through a standard glass strip-center door. Cross the threshold, though, and it’s a completely different story; the tons of highly lacquered wood in the traditional style showcase the love of both nature and detailed ornamentation that are such a big part of the Thai culture. There’s wooden paneling, wooden framing, wooden door arches, wooden window frames and faux windows and wall accents. There are fresh flowers on every table, large floral arrangements at central points in the restaurant. The saying that we taste first with the eyes applies to food, but who doesn’t get a much deeper feeling of well-being when the surroundings reflect nature, convey serenity and are conducive to escape from the stresses of the day?
While Pin Kaow’s interior had undergone a sea change the food was much as I remembered, and that was a good thing. The restaurant uses the 1-to-10 heat-index system, which is fine except that like any other system of the type it’s arbitrary; one man’s 5 can easily be another’s 10. How did this pan out at Pin Kaow? Well, I’ve been complaining a lot lately about Thai spots that dumb down their cuisine too much for spice-averse Americans. Pin Kaow definitely isn’t one of them.
We started with a Thai beef salad (part of a $6.95 lunch special). My friend had had this at Pin Kaow before, and now decided to bump her 6 up to a 7. And let’s just say that, like the Richter scale, there seems to be a larger deviation between numbers the higher you get.
Not that she minded; this was a laudable rendition of the classic dish, the tender strips of beef tossed with onions, tomatoes and cucumber in a light dressing flavored with cilantro.
I’ve had to give up scorch-the-palate foods along with cigars so I asked for my pork curry ($6.95, as part of a lunch special) mild, and indeed it was. But what it lacked in heat (again, a good thing) it definitely made up in flavor. Again, the meat was tender, though not to a ridiculous extent, and the strips were mixed with a generous amount of bamboo shoots and large basil leaves, all of it in a brothlike sauce rich with the flavors of red curry paste and coconut milk.
Lunch specials include the soup of the day and on this day it was cucumber, which was as offbeat as it sounds but very tasty, the light broth containing trimmed quarter-slices of the vegetable, which had grown milder through cooking.
Egg rolls are included as well, and these were pretty decent as these things go, tightly wrapped spring rolls filled with vegetables (primarily cabbage), fried until crunchy. You get won tons, too, and these also were crunchy, likewise free of grease, but with a filling so scant as to be nearly undetectable. And both they and the egg rolls weren’t nearly as hot as they could have been.
Still, as we cracked open our fortune cookies we considered ourselves fortunate to have dropped into Pin Kaow. Instead of spending the profits on a yacht the owner had with great care given the restaurant a thorough face-lift, and such attention to detail is always a good thing.
Las Vegas Review-Journal reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@ reviewjournal.com.