Beantown Bounty, Chapter 5

There are good Thai restaurants, and there are great Thai restaurants. This year’s Best of Boston winner, S & I Thai Cuisine at 168a Brighton Ave. in Allston is truly great, and that became obvious to us in the first bite of our Fresh Spring Roll appetizer. Our default Thai choices with new-to-us restaurants are noodle dishes (either Pad Thai or Pad See Ew) and curries (either Massaman or Red), and the Spicy Tofu Pad Thai immediately spoke to us. Fresh rice noodles were stir-fried with firm squares of tofu, scallions, bean sprouts, egg, ground peanuts, and hot peppers. Its menu description featured two (of five) pepper icons, and we figured we could handle the heat. The spice snuck up on us both, and after the initial shock—and several slurps of Thai iced tea, super-sweet and cloudy with evaporated milk—we found the palatal pain to be irresistibly addictive.

S & I had the usual curries: Massaman, Panang, and the traffic-light trio of Red, Yellow, and Green. We’ve enjoyed Mango elsewhere but were utterly intrigued by their Lychee Curry. The lychee is a white, fleshy fruit with the texture of a peach or a grape; this, coupled with spicy Thai curry sauce, tofu, vegetables, and brown rice, was indeed a most uniquely delicious dish. For dessert, Mango Sticky Rice on any menu lulls us, and this incarnation was lightly sweet and extinguished the fire on our tongues. We grabbed a box of Thai cookies (flaky dough with a sweet yellow filling) on the way out and reveled in the 126 menu items left to try on future visits.