Daisy Mint

L and I finally got to go to a new restaurant which opened this past year: Daisy Mint oriental cafe. It's very close, just half a block west of chester on colorado street. The inside was really cool, two walls had picture frames, some with pictures in them, some which were just really cool frames, and some with slight variants on just being the frame (such as being a plate that looked like a picture frame, or a frame with some bees on sticks so that it looked like they were sitting on the glass interior of the frame). There was an absolutely gorgeous table in the center of the dining room, which had a glass center piece, under which were antique sets of plates and silverware for display, sort of like a display case table.

The menu was extremely varied. Like, really crazy combinations of things, most of which looked really good. I ordered a thai fried rice with beef, a tom yum chicken soup, and L ordered a spicy spaghetti. There was also thai iced tea that was excellent, and the menu also had a wide variety of teas that I didn't try, but noticed that some people would come in and order just a tea and have that. So they must be pretty good, I'll have to try some later.

Let's start with the soup. It was a pretty large portion, and served really really hot. The menu said it was spicy, which I wasn't worried about, but should have been. Holy moly was it spicy. The culprit was a crushed thai pepper (looked like a jalapeno but smaller/condensed), and it was really spicy. However, that wasn't actually the strongest flavor, the broth itself was actually a tangy/sweet combination of lime, lemongrass, sugar and some type of thai ginger variant. Really really tasty, and L really liked it, which is unusual. If only it weren't so spicy! The mushrooms and chicken in the broth helped carry the broth's flavor well, and it was a good dish. But... spicy! My mouth still burns!

The thai fried rice was excellent, and not spicy. It had a distinct flavor which I couldn't place, sort of a light savory/starch flavor, and the rice used was very tasty. It was a very small grained white rice, that really reminded both of us of couscous but wasn't exactly that. A good dish, and very affordable - it was $6.50 and with the amount we were served, I could probably have eaten for two and a half meals on just that dish. It also really helped absorb the spiciness of the other two dishes, so it was a good thing we got it.

Lastly, the spicy spaghetti was a neat combination of italian style spaghetti - the noodles, tomatoes, basil, green and red peppers, with thai flavor: a really tasty spice that builds up. I ate a noodle and gave L a look, cause she was saying it was really spicy and I hadn't tasted any. A few seconds later I went "OH!", because it took a while for it to arrive. It was really tasty, and a completely different style of spicy than the soup had been. L had ordered it mild spicy rather than it's usual spiciness, and it was a good thing, because it was a bit too spicy for her, and about right for me, except the soup had already thrown my calibration out of whack. The waitress was really nice though, we reassured her that it was very good and it wasn't her fault we couldn't handle even the mildly spicy version. She brought us some soy milk to help, and it did. It actually was a really good complementary flavor too, so I'd recommend ordering some to go with that type of slow spice.

Overall: Very good dishes though I'd recommend being very careful with ordering the spicy ones, the prices were very good for the amount you got (A lot!), and the menu had lots of other things I'd like to go back to try.