Thai Food Orange

[Thai Food Orange is now Krua Thai as of earlier this year]

A few days ago, I had a training on the west side of Chula Vista. After going to a couple of bakeries, I passed up this relatively new Thai place on Broadway between "I" and "J"...

I remembered reading about it in the paper and even cut out the coupon thinking we'd use it eventually.



The not very imaginatively named Thai Food Orange is situated in a tiny row of businesses, across from Auto Zone and right next to La Querencia Mexican restaurant (which is another place that comes highly recommended by a few friends and which we have yet to try)...

Ugh, you can see how dirty my windows are too`!

Here is my rather neatly torn coupon (har) that was begging to be used in the name of research and also because it was a Friday night and I didn't want to cook...

With daylight savings time in effect, this is what it looks like at 5:30 nowadays. Please note that the parking lot here is one way. If you are heading south from J on Broadway, take the 2nd entrance into the parking lot. We did not and went in the wrong way, but with Bert's skillful driving, he was able to back up into the last remaining parking spot.

The sign is so crappy and you can tell they ran out of ink or paint towards the end. There is another hastily painted sign nailed onto a palm tree.

This is not Hillcrest or Del Mar or Downtown, so do not expect the same kind of ambiance.  To be honest with you, I would rather prefer a hole in the wall serving honestly good food  than a place that is decorated within an inch of its life serving watered down crappy food.

There are only a few usable tables in their narrow space.  There are colorful fake flowers in vases on all the plastic laminated tables.

We each got one dish with TC getting the "free" pad thai

Sorry for the not so good photos of the menu...

This page had a few menu items blanked out. The first was a dish that used tamarind sauce while the other two were curry dishes. I wonder what happened for them to delete it. I was kind of bummed because I would have wanted to try that tamarind sauce dish.

Both Bert and I had iced coffees...this was before I stirred mine up.

Besides us, there was only a table of five Latino guys who were making jokes and also cussing in Spanish  to each other(I understood "pinche cabron" as one of the words!). Our server was a young gal and there was also an older lady who went around asking if everything was all right.

Our three dishes..

Bert's Peanut Steak ($10.95) - a generous amount of steak (not sure what cut but it was probably a cheap cut) with shredded cabbage and vinegared cucumbers. His dish and mine came with a large bowl of rice.

TC's Pad Thai with chicken....Not very colorful, but the sauce was really good, not overly saucy or sweet either. This didn't seem to need the "filler" that some places add in, like cut up vegetables that you're not sure are part of the dish or not. In this case, less was more.

This was the Hot Basil Seafood ($10.95) which was also a generous serving. There were so many vegetables in here (zucchini, red and green bell peppers, onions, baby corn, and my favorite, eggplant. The sea food consisted of three green lipped mussels, several rings of squid, four juicy shrimp, and some cut up fish balls, along with fake Krab (which I could have done without).

They didn't ask for a spiciness level,but this did have a kick to it. You can see all the red flakes. Man, I'm such a lightweight with spicy food. I used to think I could take it, but even though I want to say "Yes crank it up", my stomach is protesting.   Out of the three dishes, I liked mine the best because of the vegetables, followed by TC's noodles. I didn't like Bert's dish as much because the meat wasn't as tender as it could have been.

As we finished our dinner, the older lady came by again with a plate of complimentary mini fried bananas for dessert! If you look closely, you can see a faint glaze of  sweet syrup on top of some of the pieces.

We loved how these were so tiny and bite sized!

This was a satisfying sweet ending to a good meal...

Thai Food Orange
686 Broadway
Chula Vista, CA 91910
(619) 947-1096

There is no website but here are the reviews from you know where...

We will have to pay them a visit again in the near future, and maybe even hit up La Querencia while we're at it!