Araya’s Place – Thai Vegan Restaurant
$$ Vegan, Thai
8101 Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Avaya’s place is more like a 3.5 out of 5 stars. The food is not bad. But I am rounding down to 3 stars because it simply was too expensive and average tasting for Thai vegan.
Avaya’s place serves the standard watery red tofu curry that you could find at any given Thai restaurant in Los Angeles. Thai Patio or Red Corner Asia, for example, have the same watery red curry that they serve in a similar portion for half the price of Araya’s $10 lunch special. No Bueno in Thai. You, dear reader, may say that “those places are not vegan though.” My rebuttal would be to name other Thai vegan examples, like The Vegan Joint or Vegan House, which would give you a heaping big bowl of curry with rice for the same $10 price. And their curries are thick and way more flavorful.
Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing majorly wrong with Araya’s red curry. The tofu was firm and the vegetables were fresh. The red curry though tastes pretty weak and uninspired. I asked for extra spicy. The chirpy younger woman who was serving me, I don’t know her name but I’ll call her ‘Gabby’ since all she did was talk to the other table she was serving for the 20 minutes I was there, told me that they’ll make the curry an extra spicy ’10 on a 1 to 5 scale’. The curry tasted like it had a lot of spice added after the curry was cooked. It wasn’t ‘extra spicy’ but the level of spiciness that I have come to expect from most Thai places not serving a Thai person. They also serve Thom Kha soup and similarly put the spices in post hoc, and it’s similarly unmemorable.
All I have to say is that this is surprising to me that it’s a 4.5 out of 5-star average rating. I guess I had high expectations coming in here, but this place would not stand a chance to hold that 4.5/5 rating in my Thai Town hood.
Useful: 3 Funny: 6 Cool: 1
10/28/2015