Thai Silver Spring

Tonight I ate at Thai Silver Spring. I think that's the name of it. It's in a neat area of downtown Silver Spring that I have never seen before, near the Discovery building. There's a cool colorful fountain outside the building and Thai is up a pretty tall set of stairs. I'm guessing there's an elevator to get up there as well, but I didn't see it or look for it. There are a bunch of restaurants in the same building, including Romano's Macaroni Grille, Lebanese Taverna Cafe (more casual version of the well-known restaurant), Austin Grille, and Ceviche, which I've heard is pretty yummy.

Our business meeting started out kind of rushed, so we all skipped on appetizers. I ordered sauteed beanthread cellophane noodles with chicken, tomato, onion (lots of onion), egg, and scallions. I asked for it spicy but when it first arrived it was bland, so I told the waitress and she whisked it away to the kitchen and it came back just a few minutes later, hot again from the pan and pretty hot from the chili too. It was pretty good. I love those noodles.

I drank water but tasted a Thai iced tea that my fellow diner ordered, which tasted like a milky and quite sweet version of Earl Grey, with an orange tint. Tasty but not really with dinner.

I was sorry to hear that they didn't have any mango for the mango with sticky rice for dessert, so instead I ordered the Almond Custard. On the menu it reads: Almond Custard with Fruit Salad. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT order this dessert. The custard was neither creamy nor custardy, nor did it have but the faintest reminder of almond flavor. And you know what the fruit salad was??? I think it was a Dole fruit cup, 80% pineapple, dumped on top of this flavorless lump of "custard" in a bowl. I should have known something was up when I ordered the dessert. "It comes with fruit salad, right?" I asked the waitress, and she said, "OK." Almost as if she was saying, "if that's what you want to call it..."

The restaurant itself was open and clean, and smelled yummy upon entering. The bathrooms were also clean, and they get an A+ for automatic soap dispensers! That's not something I see very often. But why would they have automatic soap dispensers when they have manual paper towel dispensers - the kind that after you pull off a towel, you have to turn the wheel on the side to get the next one to pop out. Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose???

I'd recommend Thai for some tasty Thai dishes, but I don't think they are offering anything amazing or unusual on the menu, and it's not worth leaving Northern VA when there are so many good Thai restaurants on that side of DC. And don't, I mean DON'T, order the almond custard.