Birthday at Bangkok Joe’s
December 10, 2008 § Leave a comment
This year, I celebrated my birthday with dinner at Bangkok Joe’s. Even though it was down on K Street and snowing by the time we left campus [we opted for a cab], once we got to the waterfront it was extremely easy to find.
Bangkok Joe’s is nowhere near your casual Thai restaurant – the decor inside was extremely classy and dimly lit – but the food comes out amazingly quickly. Erin and Lee had to leave at around 8:00 and ordered their food while we waited for friends from University of Maryland to arrive, and they got their food in about 15 minutes. They definitely could have ordered with the rest of us and still made their party afterwards.
The food was delicious. Joe’s is more of a dumpling bar than entree-oriented, so we orderd appetizers for the table as a sampling. Pork and crab shumai, fried calamari [because I can never resist anything dipped in batter and submerged in boiling oil], giant chicken dumplings, and others. I really liked the calamari here but the shumai wasn’t that amazing. I think I still prefer the dimsum ones at China Garden.
The entrees were served in these beautiful white noodle bowls that were rather deceiving when it came to serving size. I was full before I even finished half of my drunken noodles but ate them anyway. I don’t know why I love them so much, but the balance between spicy and sweet is always an excellent combination. And for some reason, the chicken tasted really good too. The only gripe we had [mostly Ameya] was that due to the asymmetricity [?] of the bowls, we couldn’t reach over and steal some noodles from the person sitting across the table as stealthily.
The highlight of the dinner was definitely dessert. My favorite was the fried roti dough with taro paste inside and ice cream on top. It was so simple yet everything came together so well and I loved the subtle sweetness of the dough itself. The other desserts were a flourless chocolate cake with berries and rum chocolate sauce and mango sticky rice, a classic.
We will definitely be returning to Bangkok Joe’s in the future but with a focus on the dumplings. I saw peking duck dumplings, a variety of different rolls, and other items that sounded delicious but I couldn’t fit everything in my stomach at the time.
Notes on Food 
Leave a Reply