Jatujak Thai Street Style Food

A while ago, I found an article titled “30 Of the Best Restaurants in Scarborough”.  Although I grew up in North York, Scarborough was foreign territory to me.  Scarborough never has anything that interested me, so I never ventured into that area.  I also find Scarborough a bit sketchy to be honest, theres some pretty ghetto looking areas……  Anyways, I sent this link to a friend and a few days ago I got a message from my friend asking if I was free for dinner and that we should try something from this best of list in Scar bough.  There were some restaurants on the list that we’ve tried already, so we were able to narrow down our choice pretty quick to Jatujak (also because we didn’t want to drive too far on a weeknight). 

I was pretty excited, the reviews on Yelp for Jatujak were pretty good.  And I love Thai food.  My favourite is Pai in the Entertainment/Theatre district.  But that’s FAR!  So I was really hoping that Jatujak would just as good so I wouldn’t have to go so far to feed my Thai food cravings.  For the four of us, I think we ordered a lot of food.  Guess it’s because one of the guys essentially eats the amount for two people.  Drinks, we got Thai iced tea, and a Nom Yen (Red Milk Tea).  The Thai iced tea I found was too sweet and too weak.  Previous iced teas I’ve tried usually has a really strong black tea base.  And for some reason, it smelled like grass jelly.  The red nom yen, supposedly a Thai specialty drink, smelled sweet and syrupy, reminded me of cough syrup.  It looked like Pepto Bismol in ice.  I wasn’t so keen on trying it.  The friend that ordered it said it was just meh….. 

Thai Iced Tea

For appetizers, we got chicken and beef satay (an order only comes with two skewers), lemon grass chicken wings.  I’ve never been a fan of satay skewers.  I’ve always envisioned the skewers to be barbequed at a high enough heat to cook the meat, not overcook it, and also carmelize the outside of the meat.  I’ve never had that, EVER……  These skewers had some colour on it, but very little, it could have been nuked in the microwave for all I know.  Served alongside the skewers was a salad.  It seemed to have pieces of iceberg lettuce, red onion, apple and green mango.  The salad was just ok, nothing special. 

Beef & Chicken Satay Skewers

Lemongrass chicken wings, looked like soy sauce chicken wings, lacked lemongrass flavour.

Lemon Grass Chicken Wings

For mains we ordered holy basil with chicken & egg, khao soi with beef, gaeng kiew whan with chicken, and pad see eew with beef.  The holy basil with chicken is my favorite dish when I eat Thai food.  I love how fragrant the basil is.  The chicken is cooked with the basil and served with steamed rice and a fried egg.  The chili sauce that was served on the side, was spicy and very salty.  I thought there would be some sweetness in the sauce but there wasn’t.  

Holy Basil Chicken

Khao soi is a must order for us whenever we see it on the menu.  When the curry sauce/soup/broth is done well, I eat it with any sort of white rice that’s left on the table.  This broth was just ok.  There was plenty of noodle, egg based I believe, and plenty of fried noodle.  But by the time I got to serving myself a portion of this dish, there was still plenty of noodle, but just one last piece of beef.  Complaints around the table with this dish was that the beef was tough….and tough it was.  

Khao Soi

Gaeng kiew whan is green curry.  The green curry had good flavour, just the right amount of spice, but was to thin consistency wise.  One thing I noticed was that the chicken in this dish, and the skewers had a bit of a rubbery texture.  The texture was similar to how Chinese restaurants do sliced beef, they typically ‘treat’ the beef with something, to soften it.  I wonder if they did that with the chicken here.  

Gaeng Kiew Whan

The pad see eew with beef was my least favorite of the bunch.  The dish is essentially sliced beef (there was a lot of beef), stir fried with vermicelli.  From what I saw and tasted, it wasn’t rice vermicelli, it was mung bean vermicelli.  And when mung bean vermicelli isn’t in a sauce of some sort, it clumps together.  So it wasn’t exactly appetizing looking.  Flavour wise, no basil flavour even though it’s supposed to be cooked in a basil sauce.  It again was heavy on the soy sauce flavour.

Pad See Eew

I have to say first of all, I have never been to Thailand, so I cannot claim that I know Thai food.  But in my own personal opinion I think overall, the food here is lacking something.  In Chinese it would be ‘wok hay’, extra fire?  For Thai food uptown, I would consider this to be better than any other Thai restaurant in Markham/Richmond Hill.  But I still prefer Pai over Jatujak.

Jatujak Thai Street Style Food

1744 Victoria Park Ave.,

Toronto, ON

M1R 1R4

Phone:  (647) 352-1744

Hours:  Monday - Sunday 11:00a - 10:00p