If Nicolas Cage opened a restaurant, it might feel like Fo Thai
Fo Thai, the new Siamese-inspired restaurant at 119th Street and Roe in Leawood, is so theatrical that even going to the bathroom is a dramatic experience.
One doesn’t merely make a couple of sharp turns to find the restroom. No, the journey requires a religious pilgrimage past a giant Buddha statue bathed in colored lights, over a little arched bridge perched above a bubbling stream, and into a dimly lighted hallway decorated with a pretty mural of an Asian hamlet. By the time I slid open the heavy wooden door — curved because this softly illuminated chamber is round — I wasn’t sure if I was in there to pee or pray. To be safe, I did both.
Once I’d traversed the Silk Road back to my seat, I half-expected the waitstaff — tall, slender non-Asians in starched white shirts and topaz-colored neckties — to burst into “Getting to Know You,” from The King and I. No, wait: This dining room is so dark, particularly the booths tucked into the western side of the space, that “We Kiss in the Shadows” would be a better choice.
Alas, the servers at Fo Thai don’t sing (a couple of them can barely wait tables), but there are disc jockeys spinning tunes on weekends in the “swanky ultra-lounge,” as the publicist puts it. And that’s the difference between Fo Thai and every other Thai restaurant in the city. In this space where the décor hews closer to Las Vegas than to Bangkok, the presence of a swanky ultra-lounge isn’t a shock.
“It doesn’t matter if the food is sensational or not,” said a visual artist who dined with me at Fo Thai one night. “Sometimes it’s just a pleasure to eat in a visually stimulating environment.”
I agree that a visually pleasing setting is an important component to a great meal — one important component. The Savoy Grill, for example, has one of the city’s most gorgeous dining rooms, but that still doesn’t enhance its cuisine. And I hate eating in an antiseptic, badly lighted space no matter how fabulous the food might be.
Fo Thai’s interior does, in fact, trump executive chef Chee Meng So’s tasty food. That’s not for lack of So’s presentation and skill, but let’s be real about this. With its sleek, metal-tipped chopsticks and charming pagoda, Fo Thai is a palace compared with the charmless Hot Basil, a Thai restaurant several blocks to the west. But the menu of Hot Basil chef Lee Chai has a wider variety of more flavorful (and less costly) dishes.
“But Hot Basil is a traditional Thai restaurant,” says a friend of mine who travels frequently to Thailand. “Fo Thai doesn’t pretend to be that. The chef has said that it’s a fusion of cultural influences.”
Thailand’s best-known culinary exports are on the menu — tom yum soup, pad Thai, and green-papaya and mango salad — so if the food isn’t traditional Thai cuisine, what is it? I’d call it a melting pot of cultural references — panethnic. Dishes include pizza topped with salsa and fresh tuna, a warm-goat-cheese salad, a couple of steaks (including the $59 charred chili-rubbed Kobe beef sirloin), and even all-American surf and turf with prime Angus tenderloin splashed with a Thai basil beef jus. Oh, and an angel-hair creation with French beans, cherry tomatoes and crispy chicken strips atop the pasta. If that sounds a little Applebee’s to you, well, you’re not alone.
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But I’m getting ahead of myself. On both of my dinner visits to Fo Thai, I was greeted with the “we do things a little differently here at Fo Thai” speech. I detest introductory speeches under the best of circumstances, and this one was especially long-winded. The gist: Instead of serving all the meals at one time, each dish would be delivered individually so that everyone at the table could share.
This kind of timing requires very patient diners with a lot of time to eat a leisurely meal. On my first visit, dinner was a two-hour affair, from starter to dessert. On another visit, I was waited on by a shy young man who announced that he would bring out my table’s two appetizers, salad and three entrées one at a time. It didn’t quite work out that way. First came the salad, then all the entrées at once, and then one appetizer for dessert. The second appetizer never arrived because he had forgotten to turn it in to the kitchen. On the plus side, it was a much faster meal.
In retrospect, the fumbling waiter probably had the right idea. That salad — a jumble of jicama and green-papaya matchsticks with segments of tart pink grapefruit and bits of candied tamarind in a sweet-spicy chili-lime-and-truffle dressing — may have been the best way to begin a meal here. The “lazy crepes” starter is more interesting as a concept than as a dish to share. A bowl of deliciously creamy curried broth, dappled with mushrooms and chicken, arrives sided with a crisp, feather-light crepe (more like an Indian dosa, really) that can be torn into pieces and dunked into the soupy “sauce.” But the crepe had stayed on the griddle a shade too long and was hard and crumbly — well beyond good dipping consistency.
On one visit, the fish of the day was red snapper, and the preparation was extraordinary: flash-fried with a dazzlingly light crust. On a more recent visit, the fish was a Mediterranean branzino that was simply too frail and thin to have been breaded and fried. It had so little flesh on it that I thought I was eating a fishy cottage-fried spud.
The pad Thai here had some heat but was otherwise indistinct (and the vegetarian version was prepared with fish sauce). The wok-fried jumbo shrimp, with a vibrant red basil-soy glaze, was wonderful, the best shrimp dish I’ve tasted in months, tossed with translucent onions and red bell peppers. I’d order it again in a minute.
My friends who joined me on my second visit told me that they liked Fo Thai, but they felt that the menu lacked focus and the service was annoying. (It didn’t help when the waiter dropped a hot metal serving-dish lid onto a companion’s lap.)
She didn’t like the Buddha statue, though. “He looks like Nicolas Cage.”
Fo Thai being so theatrical, maybe it’s supposed to look like Nicolas Cage.
