Spoon - What we talk about when talk about Chicago Thai

Are there any gastro-frontiers left in major cities? Have Yelp, Chowhound, et al mapped even the darkest corners of metropolitan food-dom? In another era Thai Sticky Rice and Spoon might have been gems reserved for only the most cognoscenti Chicagoans. Western Ave’s unwelcoming blocks of strip malls and muffler repair shops would have proved wilderness enough to deter most would-be Louis and Clarks.

Instead, one can expect overflowing crowds at either location on most weekend nights (the weekends starting, naturally on Thursday - the new Friday). Dear restaurants: when your web site states no reservations, please do not reprimand us for not making a reservation. This should have been a review of Thai Sticky Rice, known as the premier Chicago restaurant for Northern Thai cuisine. Instead, a long wait forced us on the entitled, young white people version of a Trail of Tears: up a few more blocks on the same street for an equally celebrated Thai spot.


Neither did we make it easy on ourselves with a rotating cast that could swell to over a dozen or dip precipitously into the lowly half dozen. Sizzlenuts brought several of his Austin/cognitive science crowd, with Pointers and Chłodnik making their second GCL appearance, Manners and Chasing Amy their first. For my entourage, Mumbles and DiaBetty represented last year’s roommates, and Sags this year’s, and Chuckles, well, no one can figure out exactly what he represents.

To order anything but the fish dishes at Spoon (4608 N. Western Ave) is to cheat yourself of two simple joys: absurd deliciousness and the wait staff’s inability to orally communicate their own menu to customers. The Philadelphia fish didn’t have any cream cheese but it packed philly attitude; the same for some salmon dish whose name escapes me; the pork neck salad is unreasonably good; the green chicken curry was more than adequate; the spicy sausage appetizer however was shrug (oh Sabai-dee, will you forevermore haunt my Southeast Asian sausage experiences?).

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