I still haven’t come up with any restaurants that can match the beauty of this man’s homemade Pad Thai here in Austin, but Celebrity Intern and I took another stab at it this week at the Fire Bowl Café.
With a mighty hunger upon us, and a need for a close approximation of the delicious noodles we were missing after visiting U & Me in Montreal, we had heard good things about Fire Bowl’s menu. We hit up their North Austin location (at 9828 Great Hills Trail) in search of a miracle, or at least a strong facsimile of the divine Pad Thai dancing in our heads.
Celebrity Intern gives their Pad Thai “a solid 8.327,” complaining about “not enough MSG” (oddly, something that everyone else resents having in their Asian food, he happens to LOVE). I would agree that the Pad Thai rates somewhere between an 8 and a 9 out of 10, mostly because it was slightly lacking in composition (i.e. ingredients). Yes, it had the standard chicken, shrimp, egg, rice noodles, peanuts (lots and LOTS of peanuts), bean sprouts, cilantro and scallions, but I felt it could’ve used more of all of the above. Except the peanuts, which were already prolific.
This Pad Thai was, in my opinion, a good effort and overall fairly satisfying, but it just needed to be more. Kick it up a notch and see where it goes, Fire Bowl Café! Gimme more shrimp and chicken, and don’t be so stingy on the spices (did we even get the cilantro pictured below?), either. Thai food should be identified by its hotness, after all.
Yeah, if our bowl of Pad Thai had been studded with this much shrimp, I would've been far more satisfied...
For those who like to kick everything up a notch on their own, there were plenty of spicy sauces to play with at the condiment counter. Celebrity Intern and I were torn about whether to slather the noodles with a hot sauce that was more chunky or more drippy, as both seemed viable options. Plus there was the standard srirachi chili sauce in a squirt bottle, for both hot and sweet together. I’m sure that many a lackluster order has been surprisingly altered by industrious patrons, armed with hot, sweet and sour sauces from the condiment rack. Bonzai!
Admittedly, we went lame-o Americano on our second choice of entrée, choosing the oh-so-Western General Tso Chicken. The cashier bafflingly asked what kind of noodles we wanted with that (doesn’t this dish normally get served with rice?!), so we ended up going with the flat rice Chow Fun noodles, which all stuck together in a glob at the bottom. Doh!
For our appetizer (which was ultimately served with our entrées), we went for the Crispy Crab Rangoons. My only complaint was that we only ordered 2, and I wanted more. Deep frying + cream cheese + crab + sweet and sour sauce = yum.
Overall, I think I would rate the Fire Bowl Café an 8 out of 10. The food is pretty standard pan-Asian cuisine, and the portions are quite generous (and inexpensive; this meal cost us about $22 with drinks), but as someone who likes to go more “native” on the spices, I found these dishes a bit bland. Doctoring at the spice rack improved them a bit, but why should I have to fix the spiciness of my dish when I’m eating out? Make it hotter and the people who like the heat will come, and the crybabies will all stay home with their nanny where they belong.
Bring on the heat!
