highs and lows at jitlada

[tastycakes]

after reading many posts on jitlada, my fiance and i finally had a chance to eat there tonight. having done our research, the only difficult part was trying to narrow down our choices to a manageable number. we decided on the mussels - hard not to with j gold's review staring up at you from the table - raw blue crab salad, mango and cashew salad with crispy fried catfish, and the soft shell crab curry. our waitress asked how spicy we wanted it. now this is where listening to all the recommendations bit me in the ass. i had read the stories about people dripping sweat and practically weeping from the incendiary heat of the "no spicy" versions of their dishes. so even though on a scale of one to ten i can tolerate a 7, and my fiance can probably handle a 9 or 10, we asked for "medium spicy," which we soon discovered meant no spice whatsoever.

the crab salad was the only dish with even a trace of heat, and was pleasantly mouth tingling, fresh, and balanced with sweetness from the mango and papaya, warming bitterness of galangal, and the herbal punch of lemongrass. it was delicious, and if i had known then that all the other dishes were to be devoid of heat, i would have saved more of it so the dressing could punch up everything else.

don't get me wrong, the other items were excellent, and far from bland even in the absence of spiciness. the catfish salad was a wondrous play of slippery, sweet, crunchy and salty, although the cashews had turned into peanuts. but i somehow felt cheated. i walked in wanting to experience the real deal, and my caution led me to disappointment. luckily there are plenty of tantalizing meals to be had there in the future. i just won't make the same mistake next time.

[aventinus]

They will make many dishes as spicy as any person could want. Try ordering "pet pet" (roughly, very spicy) or "pet ma" (roughly, as spicy as possible). They just have the business sense to know that most white people who say "medium" mean something along the lines of Taco Bell "fire sauce."

[Skorgirl]

Just to clarify, if you want it very spicy, the right way to say this is "pet mahg", not "pet ma." For the spiciest possible, you can try "pet mahg tee soot."

[Wolfgang]

My biggest disappointment when I went to Jitlada a month ago was the beef curry. I was with my GF who is just beginning her spice journey, so we ordered everything light spiced. The beef curry was overwhelmed by coconut flavour, which I guess they use to tame it down. It ruined the dish.

[condiment]

In the case of that particular dish, it's like ordering the steak au poivre without the pepper. It can technically be done, but it kind of misses the point.

[Chowpatty]

Yeah, well, that's what happens when a bunch of non-Thais start going there -- some will welcome the hot dishes, but others will ask for them more mild and after a while they get scared of offending people. Although the beef curry is the only dish I've ever had there that actually made us cry, and this was pre-white people discovery. Even when we ordered a huge seafood meal with several total spice hounds and Jazz knew we wanted the real thing, nothing was particularly spicy except the beef curry which our masochistic friend ordered pet-pet doubled.