Caf

It may be difficult to find at first, but it’s worth the search. The Café de Thai, which opened in the spring of this year, is an airy restaurant with seafoam green walls and teak tables and chairs imported from Thailand. Several dramatic pieces of teak carvings also from Thailand adorn the walls, but the real treasure is the food. As artistically prepared and inventively flavored as the décor, the food is worth the drive to this Oceanside establishment on the corner of College Avenue and Oceanside Boulevard.

Vet Piyas, who is owner of the restaurant along with Preeda Bunyagidt, said that the food they serve is healthy as well as fresh. He also noted that their cuisine resembles that of central Thailand where the food is not as hot or spicy as in other areas of the country.

It was Piyas’ idea to open a Thai restaurant that also offered a Japanese sushi bar. “I wanted to bring the two together for a unique place to dine,” he explained.

The extensive sushi bar will accommodate approximately twenty guests, who can feast on such delicacies as Flying Fish Egg, Eel, Sea Urchin and Amaebi, which is a sweet shrimp flown in live from Japan. Over fifty items are served from the sushi bar including a roll called a Caterpillar which really isn’t a caterpillar, but a California Roll enhanced by eel and avocado.

Because the owner of the restaurant is of Thai descent, the lunch and dinner menus feature authentic Thai dishes. Begin your meal with hot green tea and a bowl of Tom Kah soup. This soup is an amazing blend of herbs and spices. One herb, known as galangal, was foreign to me, but I discovered that it is also known as Ginza root or Siamese ginger. In Thailand, this root is sometimes mixed with lemon juice and used to cure stomach ailments.

The ceremonious mix of flavors in the Tom Kah soup is a bit confusing to the palate – it is just difficult to pick out any one spice. The soup is made with a base of coconut milk intermingled with galangal herbs, lemongrass, cilantro, carrots, peas, zucchini, mushroom, green onions, red chilies – and I think I detected a bit of anise and tamarind which would offset the sweet coconut milk. It is the most strikingly exotic soup I have ever tasted and was disappointed when I came to the bottom of the bowl!

All lunch specials include soup, a spring roll, salad and rice or noodles. For a luncheon entrée I recommend the “Yellow Curry Fried Rice.” This dish is made with jasmine rice stir-fried with yellow curry, plums, peas and carrots, then topped with tempura onion strips. The rice is the star of the show, but the chicken satay served with the dish stands on its own as well. The tender tempura-style chicken is also served with light tempura onion rings, sweet plum sauce and a spicy curry sauce.

Accompanying the order is a green salad, which at first looks like typical mixed greens with julienne carrots, but don’t be fooled – the dressing, which is a Thai peanut sauce mix, sets it flavors above.

Patrons of this fine establishment can forget that they are in an Oceanside shopping village and be whisked away to Thailand with the artistically prepared and exotically flavored food. A lilting fountain flows into a bowl full of fresh plumeria blossoms, setting the mood for a tantalizing dining experience.

Café de Thai

4196 Oceanside Boulevard,

Oceanside

(760) 945-5533