Joined Mary, Jen, Adrian and June for dinner at Thai 1827, the Thai-fusion restaurant of the Art House (or what used to be the old Parliament House). Mary's a regular figure there as she works in the building so she arranged dinner for us. It's nice for us to be able to meet up again over a meal; our schedules are so unpredictable it's a rare occasion when we have a free evening together.

June and I were first to arrive, on time as usual, Adrian joined us 15 minutes later, and we waited for at least half an hour before the three of us simply had to order first or starve to death waiting. Told you everyone was busy. Ordering a la carte would have been an expensive proposition, but the restaurant offers a 3 or 4 course set for $30 and $38 respectively. The set comprises any combination of starter, soup, main course and dessert followed by a coffee or tea.

My starter was a Vietnamese-style maguro maki using Viet spring-roll skin to hold the maguro slice and vegetables together. My spicy beef soup wasn't all that spicy, but the beef chunks were tender and went well with the mystery dip provided. I ordered the rack of lamb (this is Thai?) which was light and delicately flavoured, with a fine layer of fat for the added yummy factor at the cost of mounting calories. Dessert was a goreng pisang a la mode: deep fried banana fritter coated in cinnamon powder and served with a scoop of coconut ice cream. It was a little too sweet for June's taste, but I enjoyed it. *burps satisfyingly

We discovered at the end of our dinner that Thai 1827 throws in a birthday cake with the wait staff singing the birthday song with any table reservation on the occasion of a birthday celebration. The cake came from the restaurant's sister operation, The Stage Door, and it seemed to me to be a mango sherbert cake, though I'm pretty sure there's no such recipe. It was very cold, like an ice-cream cake, only more ice less cream. The first mouthful was a refreshing, sour surprise that quickly resolved into a pleasant mango flavour on the aftertaste. Nice cake. Wonder what they did with the half we couldn't finish? We were so full by then.

Jen was nice and drove us home from downtown. Adrian's given up his idea of buying a car. Now he just wants to save up and retire as soon as possible. He must have been talking to his Mom. Hee hee.

A couple of pix:

Our nicely set up table, too bad it's missing FOOD!


The 'after' picture. We waddle home.