Sab e Lee

Bert and I finally checked out this new Thai place that I read about on MMM-Yoso's blog. Here's his post here. Although the restaurant's name isn't on the GINORMOUS blue awning that wraps around this strip mall, this is THE place to go for Thai food. Forget those pussified Thai places all over San Diego, this one is the real deal. Sab e Lee is on the corner of Ulric and Linda Vista Road. You can't miss the blue awning-ed strip mall there.

The restaurant is pretty small. There are four 4-top tables and one that seats two, which we snagged. Luckily there were open spots since it was 12:45; we must have arrived after the lunch rush. We noticed that we were the only non-Thai customers there. How do I know this? I overheard the owner speaking to everyone else and it wasn't in English. Even when more customers came in, they were Thai. Now when going to an ethnic restaurant, this is a GOOD THING. You don't want to walk into an ethnic restaurant and find no one of that ethnicity eating there. That usually means they've watered down their dishes for American tastes. You may as well eat at PF Changs or some other abomination.
There are nearly 100 items on this menu and we plan on coming back to try more. We only picked three dishes today...
Bert, being the coffee freak (although he's trying to cut down) ordered the Thai iced coffee ($1.75). It was a little too sweet for me - must be all that cream.
The first item we ordered was the Papaya Salad ($5.95). The owner (who is super nice by the way) asked us how spicy we wanted it. I told him to make it very spicy. The salad consists of shredded green papaya, a wedge of cabbage, tomatoes, green beans (just a little bit), dried shrimp, a lot of chilis, lime juice and peanuts. Every bite that we took had pepper seeds or chili flakes in it. Even though this salad was pretty fiery, it didn't make me want to stop eating it! Bert and I kept on picking at this even though I was beginning to sweat. My nose was even beginning to run, but fk it! This was delicious! In the back of my mind I was fearing the future consequences of this spicy meal, but interestingly enough, I didn't experience a "spicy" finale the next day.

There were two sausage dishes we wanted to try, the Northeastern and the Northern style sausages. The owner said the Northeastern was popular so we went with that. The Northeastern Style sausage ($6.95) is pork sausage with rice and curry sauce (according to the menu). The other sausage (which we will order next time) was the same but instead of rice, it had pork skin as the ingredient. I couldnt' really taste the curry in here, but I really liked the sausage.

This is why...look at that porky goodness! And the rice in there made for an interesting texture.

The sausage tasted really awesome with a side pint of sticky rice ($2.00), which is listed on the menu as "Sweet rice"although it wasn't sweet. The rice was perfectly cooked, no mushiness or hard grains. The portion size was perfect too, but if one were really hungry, I'm sure just one person could polish one off one of those little steamer baskets.

The third and last dish we ordered was the Nahm Tohk ($6.95). This is beef with rice powder, chilis and lime juice, along with red onions and mint leaves. Again, the dish served with a wedge of cabbage and the side garnishes of shredded carrots and red cabbage.

I loved the textures and tastes of this salad - the grainy/powdery beef, the crunchy vegetables, the spiciness of the chili along with the cooling mint. We had a version of this at Tamarind Thai in La Mesa. I thought theirs was pretty good (they served their beef on top of spring greens though), but this version kicks ass.

We ended up saving half of this to take home since we were full from killing the sausage and papaya salad. Our daughter tried the Nam Tohk later that night but it proved to be spicy for her. Well, our meal did not disappoint and we definitely plan a return visit!