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1235 Guy (at Ste-Catherine)
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RESERVATIONS: 933-9949. Hours: Mon 5:30–10:30pm; Tues–Fri noon–2:30pm; 5:30–10:30pm. Wheelchair access: No. Credit cards: All major. Alcohol: All. Prices: expect to pay around $30 - 40 each after tax and tip if you split a bottle of wine, but you can get by on a lot less.
It’s not often one walks into a restaurant in Montreal at 6:30 on a Thursday evening without a reservation to find that one has squeaked in and bagged the last available table, but it happens.
Montreal is one of the few cosmopolitan world-class cities I know of where one rarely has to bother with reservations, unless it is at one of the trendy chophouses on the Main.
I certainly didn’t expect a Thai place to be filled to capacity at barely the start of Happy Hour, but there it was: I had snagged the last table for four in the entire place. I felt a little abashed at having told my dining companions earlier that there would be “no need to make reservations,” but had I arrived a mere five minutes later, we would have been looking at at least a 25-minute wait. But thanks to the god of Kaeng Phet (hot curry, to the uninitiated) fortune smiled upon us.
My companions arrived shortly afterwards and we were all a bit disconcerted by the crowd that began to assemble in the short hallway inside the front door, eyeing every table with the practiced steely gaze of turkey vultures.
Phayathai doesn’t usually show up in the “top ten” of the forty or so Thai places in Montreal, but I have the feeling this is changing. The usual suspects, Red Thai and Thailande, both around the Plateau area, had better gird their loins for some serious competition here.
The main sticking point in Phayathai’s plot to take over the world of Montreal Thai places seems to be at the moment a serious lack of space. The main room on the ground floor is frightfully, almost comically small, especially from the viewpoint of being confronted by the mob that wanted to sit down in it. There is perhaps room for a maximum of 40 diners. There is a second floor, but it wasn’t clear what it was used for from the description of the harried waiter—possibly the owner, from his accommodating demeanour. I found out subsequently that on Fridays and the weekend they open up the second floor.
But to put it simply, on the night we were there, they were overwhelmed.
 But so were we! Once we got past the noise of the hubbub gathered at the front door and a few rude patrons ostentatiously blasting cell-phone ring tones, the menu showed great promise. Two of us gazed longingly at the “three-chili” icons next to several of the dishes and muttered wistfully that we wished there were four. One of us gazed in horror at the two-chili icons.
No matter: we would splurge and share without chili prejudices the spirit of “gin” (with a hard “g”)—the spirit of food and drink. After all, Thailand is a place where a common greeting is not “How are you,” but “What did you have for breakfast?” so a matter of one or two chilies is never a bone of contention.
Therefore, I ordered the hottest dish on the menu, Phad Phet Kai (sauteed chicken in hot chili sauce)—”Phet” being the operative word meaning “Hot” and pronounced, somewhat disconcertingly as “pet”—and my other three-chili pal ordered the hottest appetizer, a beef ‘n’ cilantro scorcher. But we compromised with some Imperial rolls and shrimp wontons, who have never had intimate relations with chilies.
Our two other choices for the mains were the beef in basil sauce and the green-curry chicken.
The prices are reasonable, with appetizers ranging from $3.50 to $9 and main courses hovering around $12. The wine list has a fairly hefty markup, though, at a ratio of about 2 1/2 times the SAQ price. We settled on an Orvieto, as none of us was interested in sake at a Thai restaurant and there seems to be no native Thai elixir. Besides, white wine just seems to somehow mesh with nam pla and kaffirs.
The Imperial rolls, when they arrived, were smoky, scalding hot and full of crispy beansprouts, cabbage and savories, and came with a sharply sweet dip. The shrimp “dumplings” were more like Japanese “shuu-mai” but deep-fried to a greaselessly crispy finish and offered with a coarse peanut dipping sauce. Delightful. The sliced beef salad with chili-cilantro dressing was a wondrous sweet-sour-hot-umami concoction that blasted away all thoughts of the nasty weather outside the bay windows. Our one-chili pal made silent and remarkable headway into this fiery feast, devouring at least a third. She had, to quote someone we all love to hate, “kicked it up a notch.”
However, it was a windless oasis after these treats, service-wise. The two servers (one of them whom I suspected to be the owner) were kept busy by the constant flux of patrons showing up looking for a table and maintaining several slow-as-molasses tables who had been there before we came and looked likely to be there waaaay after we’d tucked ourselves in with a brandy and a well-thumbed copy of “How To Teach Your Old Phet New Tricks.”
 Still, they gamely sallied forth, and eventually—very eventually— the main courses arrived. We waited again while the rice was sown, grown and harvested, and were rewarded with exquisite bowls of tiny roundels of coconut-scented jasmin jewels. There was no genteel decorum in what followed—it was a melée of forks and spoons.
The chicken with green curry sauce was bathed in a coconut-infused quintessence of the Five Flavors and the beef with basil was a solid rebuttal to the theory that all good Thai food should be ultra-spicy. My much-anticipated Sweet Fire O’ Gawd Chicken in Chili Sauce was not the five-alarmer it had promised to be, but it was plenty palate-tickling nonetheless.
*Deep sigh, again* However, the wine was not to show its vintage for yet another ten minutes. The place was simply too busy. Our order had been forgotten completely. When it came, though, we were much the gladder for it. Orvieto was the choice of my three-chili pal, and I must say it just goes to show that capsaicin does occasionally have a salutary effect on the brain. (Joke! I make small joke.) The crisp dryness of the wine complimented the food perfectly.
It must be said that when all was done, the owner went out of his way to divide the check into two, one for me and one for them, and that included my only having to pay a third of the cost of the wine. This is beyond exemplary. And it must be pointed out that he offered to do this the moment we sat down, so it was not an apology for the sluggishness of the service.
It will be interesting to see what becomes of Phayathai, because at the moment it is too popular for its own good. I shall endeavor to take my chili pals there again when it expands—hopefully to the much-anticipated 4 chili-level—and I promise a full report.
— Reviewed by Nicholas Robinson
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