My first experience with Thai food was the summer after my junior year while on internship out in Silicon Valley. This was during the tech boom, so our employer happily paid to fly us (several friends, including my wife-to-be, were interning or co-opping at the same company) out there and get us settled in. At the end of the summer, our manager took the entire group out to dinner at a restaurant called High Thai, and we discovered that Thai food is a Good Thing(tm).
I’ve only dined at Thai restaurants a few times since then—usually when in eastern Massachusetts, where ethnic restaurants abound—but never in the Capital Region until recently. A friend of mine mentioned that Sukhothai had recently expanded its menu. When hearing I’d never been there in the first place, he strongly encouraged me to try it out. So, camera at the ready in case we got a glimpse of the wild reveller in its natural habitat, my wife and I headed down to Lark Street in Albany.
The building where Sukhothai is housed is at the same time dreary and cheery. The restaurant is below street level and has a very low ceiling, so it definitely feels like you’re in a basement, complete with vintage Warren Hall-style concrete walls.
On the other hand, it’s also a very colorful place. The photos on the walls, the menus, even most of the food is brightly colored without being garish. The music playing in the background also added a comfortable, upbeat feel—even if I couldn’t tell if the lyrics were in a foreign language or English.
Besides its liberal use of pigment, the menu had two things going for it: variety and price. There are an impressive number of dishes, including plenty of vegetarian options, and the overwhelming majority of them are eight bucks or less. We actually opted for one of the most expensive items on the menu, a red duck curry, as well as a dish called Shimmering ... something—I forget. What I remember is that it was based around Thai peanut sauce, which in my book is the important part.
For an appetizer, we ordered chicken satays—long strips of chicken on skewers that are intended to be dipped in various sauces, in this case a light cucumber sauce and a peanut sauce. This gave us the first inkling of things to come; to my great dismay, the peanut sauce wasn’t very good. Besides lacking any kick to it whatsoever, it also had a very odd texture, neither really crunchy nor smooth.
Needless to say, that left the Shimmering also something of a disappointment. The meat and vegetables that went into it were fresh and cooked well, but when your primary flavoring is weak, the meal kind of falls flat. On the other hand, the duck curry was very good—also lacking in heat, in my opinion, but certainly richly seasoned, and the duck was very tender and flavorful.
I should also mention the Thai iced tea. I was not expecting a drink that arrived in layers, but that’s what I got—a layer of spice tea floating on a layer of milk. This was unique enough that after sampling both I spent a good long while drinking from the boundary between the two, so that I could get both components without disturbing the layers. Eventually I relented and stirred it up, but either way, it’s unique and quite tasty.
Dessert was unfortunately also disappointing. The ice cream was just that—nothing unique about it, and not even particularly good ice cream. The “mixed dessert” definitely made up for it in the uniqueness category, but as it was essentially gummi worms floating in sweetened coconut milk, I’d have to recommend giving it a pass.
Which is not to say that the meal wasn’t worth it. Our service was good, we came away satisfied if not totally impressed, and beverages, appetizer, entrees, desserts, tax, and tip all came to just over $30—quite a bargain. Odds are we’ll be back, since we’re both fans of Thai food, and there are lots of other dishes we haven’t tried yet.
Sukhothai is located at 254 Lark Street in Albany. To get there, take I-787 south to exit 3B for Route 20 west, Madison Ave. Follow Madison for about half a mile until you come to a Dunkin’ Donuts on the far right corner; this is Lark St. Turn right and drive until you see the big neon sign in front of Bombers Burrito Bar—Sukhothai is next door, to the lower left.
