Open Thur.-Fri. from noon to 2:30 p.m.; Sun.-Wed. from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Thur.-Sat. from 5:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Licensed. Major credit cards. 272-5339.
 Sunday evening, Sept. 28 2003:
Basil Fawlty announced "gourmet night" at Fawlty Towers with just three items, duck with orange, duck with cherries, and duck surprise (duck without oranges or cherries). "What if you don't like duck?" Basil's patron asked, to which he replied, "Then you're rather stuck."
Last night at Chao Phraya, the fancy Thai restaurant on Laurier Avenue, I realized that this is the way to enjoy these ethnic eateries with menus that have over 150 selections: select a food category, and explore it in depth. The sauces are often repeated anyway, so that the menus could theoretically be reduced to Excel-like grids, with the columns for the sauces and the rows for the basic food choices, shrimps, beef, chicken, fish, duck, crab, and so forth. As so often happens in Thai places, dishes are shared, and one ends up with a food orgy: the chicken flirts with the shrimp, the crab has its leg under the cow, while the duck's juices have blended with the sweat of the fish.
So, I decided to explore just one row of the imaginary Chao Phraya Excel chart, the one that was appropriate for September 28: duck! I have been to Chao Phraya about six times since its opening in 1988, and although it has always been excellent, last night's monozootic choice proved to be a winner. What is the adjective for "single animal", anyway? Maybe it is "monogamous": sticking to one kind of game.
My second and more painful decision was to stay away from wine and beer. The spices, tropical flavors and blood-red peppers make it quite impossible to taste any wine, regardless of its Chao Phraya classification as a special selection ($100+) or a pauper's brew (between $20 and $40). My table companions settled for a good reasonably priced Muscadet Cherreau-Carré 2001 ($27.95). Beer goes well with hot food, but bloatophobia made me stick to plain water and ice cooled Hakutsuru sake, which is a formidable bedfellow for any rice dish. And yes, the rice was declared absolutely perfect by my five Japanese companions. There is a choice of ordinary steamed rice and a sticky rice ($2.50), presented in a bamboo cup. I will remember this next year when I sit on the award jury of the annual "Festival pour Riz".
This brings us to the duck, and that September 28 date, a day after the duck hunting season opened in Quebec. I learned about this from the Boat Guy, the only other non-Japanese straggler at our table. He had tried to sail his boat from Sorel, upstream and against a 70km/hour wind, back to Montreal. It took him nearly two days, and he had to anchor his boat near a deserted island in the St. Lawrence river one evening and sleep there until the wind died down. In the morning, he woke up because of the gunshots. Unknown to him, his island was the Quebec duck headquarters, where the ducks pick up their maps and visas before heading to the US border. And yes, they were shooting at his island. He lifted his anchor in record speed, and made it back to Montreal just in time for our Thai dinner, but not after several more close calls with hunting parties, each of them surprised to discover a lonely sailboat going the wrong way up a one way river. No Montrealer has ever sailed on the mighty St. Lawrence on duck hunting season opening day and lived to tell about it.
So, duck we ordered. As an appetizer, I tried a moist and organically balanced roast duck salad mixed with onions, hot chili and mint leaves ($7.95). If you wonder what I mean by "organically balanced", I don't know myself, but it just sounded appropriate. As a main dish, I tasted two kinds of boneless roast duck ($13.95), once prepared with spinach in soya sauce and peanuts, and once covered in red curry and coconut milk with sweet basil. To accompany the duck, we had the olympic quality rice and two orders of pad thai ($9.95), which is offered with a choice of shrimp or, you guessed it, duck. This is one of the best, if not the best, pad thai in the city, one primed for the "Festival pour Pad", if and when it is created.
There were other dishes circulating around the table, a squid salad appetizer ($7.95), and a chicken salad appetizer ($7.95), both with the omnipresent mint leaves. Among the main dishes, noteworthy is a selection of frog legs in various sauces, priced at $13.95. My frogivorous companions tried them sauteed with hot chili and crispy basil leaves, oblivious to the plight of the ecologists in the South Asian swamps.
On to the mediocre dessert menu, which has just a few uninspired choices. My $5.95 "Oriental Passion" (not the expensive vixen from Tokyo seated across from me) was a rather ordinary three-colored mousse of tropical fruits. The boat guy and his pregnant neighbor had fried bananas, which is usually a smart move in a Thai place (I mean, having fried bananas). He was quieter than usual, lucky to be eating at all last night, and grateful not to have made the trip back to Montreal in a plastic duck bag in the trunk of a Dodge Duckinator. Still, he had enough energy to complain about serving the fried bananas with honey. Maple syrup would have been much more appropriate, he said, undoubtedly thinking that hot-blooded equatorial fruit needs to be cooled by a great Canadian winter liquid.
I checked the cigarette butts for fingerprints in the men's urinal, and concluded that most of the diners are decent middle-class citizens with solid family ties. More analysis revealed that no one was wearing Dior miniskirts or Prada shoes in the restaurant that night. About the dress code, I later learned that thigh-high duck hunting boots are indeed permitted by the manager, Phan Phukh Dhukh.— reviewed by RestoSpy
Review #2 (Shelley MacDonald)
 Turns out that the Chao Phraya is a river in Thailand. Elsewhere on the montrealfood.com site readers have raved about this restaurant in Montreal, so I thought I'd drag the boss in for dinner (my treat).
My first visit, with Chef Nick, is on a Wednesday night at my favourite dinnertime of 6:15. It seemed moderately busy then, but at the stroke of 7:30 the place fills up, packed, brightly lit, animated, the back smoking room also busy from the sounds of it. It's not the late dining hour that continues to amaze me – it's that restaurants here can manage to be full mid-week. In the restaurant business, this is an accomplishment.
There are other ways to tell it's a successful place – other than the fact that it's full. There's carpet on the floor. The waiters are in uniform. There are fresh flowers on every table. At 6ish it seemed like they were overstaffed. By 7:30 everyone is hopping. The service is attentive and gentle. On my second visit, a week later, the waiter sets down my bottle of beer being careful to turn the label to face me once it hits the table.
 As an appetizer, Nick has roasted duck salad ($7.95) and I order a bowl of hot and sour soup with seafood ($6.25). The duck is crispy and is garnished with fresh, slightly under-ripe, mango that has been sliced into tiny strips. My soup is quite amazing: fresh, clear broth, kaffir lime leaves, fresh cilantro, and huge pieces of identifiable fish including scallops and shrimp.
For dinner Nick has spicy beef with coconut milk ($13.95), and I have chicken in green curry ($12.95). We order two different kinds of rice – steamed and sticky. I prefer the steamed, which is still sticky, but not quite as dry as the "sticky" rice … Nick's favourite is the other one. The food is unanimously fabulous. There's tons to go around, the cut of beef in Nick's dish is generous and of good quality. The chicken in my curry isn't overcooked (a common complaint of mine) and the spices are manageable even given this girl's trepidation with very hot food.
On my second visit, I sampled the chicken satay ($8.95) and the hot and sour fish soup (not the fancy seafood one). This time the food I've picked is less than stellar. The soup, while still great, with huge pieces of tomato and button mushrooms, suffers from the lack of seafood. But it is the satay that is the biggest disappointment. The chicken is plain and lukewarm and the peanut sauce is sweet and a bit oily. It screams out for garlic and a hot spice. What a missed opportunity.
Chicken satay notwithstanding – and I hate to admit it – this place is better than any Thai food I've ever had in Vancouver. Perhaps it's not as familiar as the tiny place on Lonsdale (the one that doesn't deliver), but for freshness, service and price it's a 10. Unfortunately, there is no mango ice cream on the dessert menu (the Lonsdale place does have that advantage) and I'm probably the only person on the planet who really hates green tea ice cream.
Chao Phraya deserves its reputation of being one of the best, if not "the" best, Thai places in Montreal. But it's not cheap. Nick and I ordered two appetizers, two entrees, two servings of rice; we ordered draft saké with dinner and then a beer to follow. Total for two, including alcohol and tip, was $62.— reviewed by Shelley MacDonald
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