I’m sorry, I was out of town this weekend, so I was unable to cook.

There are going to be a few more out-of-town episodes, so I warn you now, we may be breaking the weekly tradition frequently until about January.

However, this particular weekend, I managed to come up with an alternative:  restaurant review!

We have another problem with restaurant review, which is still no camera yet.  And further, finding information about this place online is near impossible.  You can find it, and you can find it has a liquor license, but that’s about all google tells me.

I recommend this place.  It is called Lotus Asian Market and Snack Bar.  It is at 1325 George Washington Way, in Richland, Washington, USA.

It’s more of a “market” than restaurant.  The back half is various asian food supplies, a few thai and laotian videos, and a guy watching thai karaoke.  The front half, divided by cubicle walls, is the restaurant.

The menu has about eight items, and I’m only going on memory here, so forgive me if I get them wrong.

They have spring rolls, “butterflies” (closely related to crab rangoon), pad thai, papaya salad, laap, phở, and ginger chicken.  Clearly I’ve forgotten something.  They also had thai iced tea, vietnamese coffee, green tea, and jasmine tea, except they were out of jasmine tea.  Hint:  do not bother with the green tea (and I assume also the jasmine tea); I’m not sure what box it comes out of but I do not approve.

I did the ginger chicken, my friend got a phở with beef, and we split a papaya salad.

The phở was tasty enough.  I know it’s sacrilegious, but I generally don’t like phở.  I’m not sure what my excuse is, but I much prefer the korean soups over the vietnamese phở.

The papaya salad was awesome.  I’m a big fan of papaya salad in general, but this was religion-inducing tasty.  We quizzed our waitress about it; my friend is picky about her papaya salad, but I recommend you do it exactly as we did it–no shrimpy things (laos style), peanuts on top (thai style), and less sugar than they usual use.  The waitress also does it that way, and she made them prepare it exactly as she likes it.  Normally thai style comes with (sometimes still frozen!) frozen shrimps and peanuts on top.  Usually the shrimps are just dreadful, and I typically order it laos style without quizzing waitresses.  About the only warning I give here is that it was, as some people like to say, “kill-the-white-boy spicy”.

The ginger chicken was also just as awesome.  Unfortunately, half a plate of papaya salad with sticky rice left me very full, and I pretty much didn’t need to eat it at that point, but it was so tasty that I couldn’t refuse.

The place is clearly a small family run affair–our lovely waitress was trying to get her own lunch in before going to work (this is not her only job!).  The guy I actually handed money to was very quiet–the kind of quiet that I’m not sure he spoke english.  He also was missing a hand in what looked like must have been unhappy circumstances.  I didn’t ask him about it.

It was the papaya salad that will have me singing of this tiny little restaurant until I don’t think they’re open anymore, or more likely, I don’t think I’ll ever get to Richland, WA again.  One of these sundays I will get brave enough to make papaya salad, but that’s not going to happen for a while.

Update:  my spies tell me it’s the lovely waitress who does the good cooking, and in fact, she is always getting in arguments with the other people there about how to cook–with a comment “when she’s cooking, there are always two people at the tables, when he’s cooking, no one comes in”.  Hm.  And they also do fortune telling.  I’m not sure of the details of the fortune telling, though.