Kris and I have a bit of a running joke. If I ask her if she likes something, she will often say, “It was good… But not the best ever.” My response is that you can only have the “best ever” once, and if that is your standard, than it is going to be awfully hard to meet it very often.
In that vein, and to revitalize our blog a little bit, we had the idea to start a date series. Whenever we go on a date, at least for a while, we will see if we can find the “best ever” of something, usually in Columbus. This is the first installment. It is the search for the best ever egg roll. To aid in this search, I went to Google to find the best egg roll in Columbus. I found a handy site that I think we will now use for the rest of this series. It is dishtip.com. It is very nice, in that you can type in an entrée and it will give you search results based on the best reviews for that entrée in Columbus, or another city that you choose. Sadly I think Columbus is the only city close to us that is on the site.
For the egg roll, dish tip had a bunch of suggestions, but I went with Tai Asian Bistro. There were other restaurants with a higher approval rating, but not with as many reviews. Tai Asian also had the distinction of having the highest rating in Columbus for Pad Thai, another of our favorites.
So, with our rambunctious brood safely dropped off at my sisters, we headed to the restaurant. I was very impressed when we went in, while it looked like a hole in the wall from the outside, inside it had an open kitchen so you could see the food prep if you wanted to and an extensive sushi bar. Hmmm… Maybe we’ll have to come back for Sushi. Kris grabs a table and I order two egg rolls, one order of Pad Thai to split and an order of Crab Rangoons, which is one of my guilty pleasures. I was standing where I figured the food would be handed to me, they had given me a number after all, when Kris came to get me because a poor serving girl was wandering around the restaurant yelling out our number. Oops. I guess they take it to the table after all. After that awkwardness, we sat down to the table to try out our meal. First and foremost, the egg roll.
In the words of my wife Kris, who is the whole reason we were looking for the perfect egg roll in the first place, it was “really good.” It was not, however, the “best ever”. In case you are wondering, the best she’s had was some place in Nappanee Indiana. I am not an egg roll connoisseur so I couldn’t tell you what it was missing, and Kris seemed rather vague on that. In my opinion, it may have been a little on the heavy side. Just a little too hefty with not enough crisp. That being said, it may have been one of the best egg rolls I have ever had. I don’t usually go out of my way to eat them though. Kris does. So after falling a little short (though still good) on the egg rolls, I turned to the crab rangoon, a dish I WILL go out of my way for.
They straight up look awesome. After eating three of the four, I would say that it isn’t just looks. These were light, crispy, had real crab (if not they fooled me) and were delicious. Kris didn’t like them much, but could see that if you were a crab Rangoon fan, they would hit the spot. They turned out to be my favorite part of the meal. Finally we turn to the main course. Pad Thai is a dish we occasionally make at home, though not from scratch. Yet anyway, we have a recipe I want to try at some point. We’ve sampled it at many establishments and look back on a restaurant in Chicago with a certain fondness as the best we ever had.
The Dish started off on a bad foot when pork Pad Thai showed up. I’d order beef. No matter, we dug in. It was good, but not great. Since Dish tip had this as the highest rated Pad Thai in Columbus, I was expecting more. I’m not sure it is the fault of the dish however. Kris and I both seem to prefer a sweeter Pad Thai, and almost every time we get it, it just isn’t sweet enough. It should be sweet, spicy, savory all at the same time, and while this was spicy (just right) and I could taste the right flavors, the sweet was lacking. Oh well.
All and all, I think the night was a success and I highly recommend the Tai Asian Bistro. Kris and I really hope to make a return trip at some point because the Sushi looked slamming. What “best ever” should we look for next? I have a few ideas, but if someone really has a craving for something, we’ll gladly go first and be your guinea pigs, especially if you offer to babysit. :)
January 14, 2012 at 10:08 pm |
We spent our first year or two in Portland with Nate ordering biscuits and gravy every weekend at a different restaurant. That’s one meal that can be divine or horribly like wallpaper paste in my opinion. So that’s my vote. You would think there should be GOOD biscuits and gravy in the Midwest.
Personally, if I see it on the menu, I’ll order crab cakes. But, like my sister, they rarely measure up to the best ever. Which are Nate’s homemade Dungenness crab cakes.
Compliments are hard-earned in our family. As kids you could never quite be good enough. On one hand, I think it kept us from getting big heads. On the other hand, I had to learn how to give and take a compliment as adult.
January 14, 2012 at 10:10 pm |
Uh…guinea pig, roasted. I saw them for sale in Ecuador and I’ve always wanted to try one. Maybe not in Columbus. What to try??? -ben
January 14, 2012 at 10:16 pm |
Try hunting for best pizza either Chicago style or new York style
January 14, 2012 at 10:43 pm |
“Best ever” is going to be a regional thing, I suspect. And there is always going to be someone who has a better “best ever” somewhere. But if you have a Jones for egg roll, it’s a good idea to know where you are going to find some that will satisfy.
We just had some pretty good papaya salad and summer roll (non-fried) that was slammin’. Not the best ever, but good. The stir fry that followed was disappointingly mundane. But, then, it wasn’t Lawrence, Kansas where I had the absolutely “Best Ever” Hunan Cod in a hot sauce that made my mouth numb for the next three hours and taught me a great deal about the value of basic black pepper.
If you like Crab Rangoon, then you would have had a “Best Ever” experience at the old Susanna Foo in Philadelphia. It had an appetizer called “Thousand Point Crab” that I still remember 15 years later; 12 years after I’ve eaten anything that was deep fat fried. She still has a restaurant on the Main Line, but rumor has it that it is not quite as good and a good bit more expensive. Not that her Walnut Street restaurant was cheap by any sense of the imagination. I suspect she would still have this dish on her menu and if you are a fanatic for crab wrapped in wonton wrappings and fried, a trip to the Main Line in Philadelphia and a C-note+ dropped for dinner at at her new place might be just the thing. Or maybe you’d want to just do lunch. You could drive in, have lunch and drive home in one day. Heck, if you are that much of a fanatic, I will meet you for lunch and pick up the check. For lunch. Not for dinner.
January 14, 2012 at 10:52 pm |
Sadly, Thousand Point Crab is no more. Not on the lunch menu and not on the dinner menu. http://www.susannafoo.com/gourmet-kitchen-menu.html
January 15, 2012 at 8:36 am |
That’s Bounthanhs Egg Rolls in Nappanee, IN