Bangkok Peppers

My wife and I regularly get a hankering for Thai food. Our favorite dish is the common and popular Pad Thai, but we also love a good beef salad. (If someone knows where to get an outstanding beef salad, please let us know. Our initial foray into beef salad was with a friend in Pasadena, California. We've been mildly disappointed ever since. Ryann, if you read this, please send me the name of that restaurant along with some of that amazing beef salad.) But finding the perfect beef salad is not the purpose of this post.

Last night we went to Bangkok Peppers for a light meal. We each started with a spring roll, which they do quite well with. I could make a meal of them. For a main dish, I had rard na. It was a noodle dish with a brown sauce; it was quite good, but not the "medium" hot I asked for. In fact, it was mild, but good. My wife had a beef salad and a cup of tom yum soup. That was fabulous. Their version is a soup with "lemon grass, straw mushrooms, onion, tomato, Thai herbs, lime juice, and cilantro." It is a popular soup in Thailand and should be more popular here. As you know, we only think the beef salad is adequate. If it were worse, we wouldn't order it, but if it were better we wouldn't dream of a beef salad had years ago in Pasadena.

Having eaten here a number of times, I would regularly recommend it, but we had a problem last night. The food and service was fine; it was the bill that infuriated me. I looked at the bill, which I never look too closely at, and I saw a two dollar charge. We ordered nothing for two dollars. I drew attention to the server, who said the hostess, who wrote the bill, added the charge because we were "sharing" our food. I imagine she assumed my wife's salad was considered an appetizer. The server said she would take care of it. She took the bill, returned a minute later, and said it was taken care of. The two dollar charge was removed. I looked at the bill and the final cost was a penny more than it was before the two dollar charge was scratched out. What the heck?! I totaled the bill and saw it was wrong. I brought the bill to the hostess to pay and told her I thought it was misadded. This time the bill was correct. I paid; we left.

Will we return -- probably. The choices for Thai food in our area are slim. But I will be wary if we go, and I'll never embrace it as I had before.

Bangkok Peppers is located at 1040 E. Hill Rd. in Grand Blanc. Don't confuse it with Bangkok Cafe which is located just a few blocks away. You can read my comments on the Bangkok Cafe here.