Chicago (Thai) - Sticky Rice Thai Restaurant

Sticky Rice Thai Restaurant
4018 North Western Avenue, Chicago IL; Phone 773-588-0133
Date of Review: December, 2007; updated May, 2008

I love Asian food and I love every kind of it. Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indonesian and Thai! I have probably had Thai most frequently over the years and have always held Thai cuisine in high regard – both before my 2 visits to Thailand and even more so afterwards. That said, with a Korean girlfriend, I have almost neglected Thai cuisine over the last few months. Well, after a chance meeting at work with a woman from Bangkok, I was offered a suggestion and found a special place that promises to be a destination for me as long as their doors are open.

This is a small, casual Thai BYOB restaurant offering great food at reasonable prices. The restaurant is almost unrecognizable if you don’t look for it. While they do have a red and yellow sign, the restaurant comes up on you quickly after you turn off of Irving Park onto Western Avenue. The atmosphere is colorful inside and there are about 12 or so tables in the restaurant.

For starters, the Tom Yum soup is outstanding. This is a Thai restaurant run by Thais and the woman taking my order asked if I wanted my soup mild, medium or spicy. She said those terms were by American standards, not Thai ones. I ordered it hot and it was hot. The overall flavor of this chicken, onion and fresh mushroom laden Thai hot and sour soup was outstanding and the portion was good size. The grilled calamari is refreshingly non greasy and is served with a tasty lime and fish based sauce that includes about a hundred tiny chopped pieces of garlic floating in the sauce. The Thai spring rolls were decent, but no better than those I’ve had elsewhere.

For entrees, the steamed sole fish with lime sauce is the best item I have had on the menu. A large sole filet arrives sitting in a bed of sauce on a plate. I never could have imagined how good this dish would turn out to be. The sauce consisted of fresh slices of garlic, hot pepper and spicy Thai lime fish sauce. It was garnished with lime wedges, some carrot and red pepper strands and a bit of lettuce. I ate everything and used every bit of the very sticky rice the dish was accompanied with to soak up every bit of the sauce. Other entrees I have tried include the Num Prik Ong. This spicy, tasty dish consists of ground pork, tomato and onion cooked with red chili paste and is served with carrots, cucumbers and of course sticky rice. The large portion of gigantic prawns cooked in a clay pot with glass noodles and button mushrooms wasn’t quite as tasty as the other dishes I’ve tried but still hit the spot. The Pad Thai is average.

Most of the items on the menu are under $8. On my last visit, the Tom Yum soup was $3.25 and my fish dish was $7.95. I didn’t order a drink and my total bill came to $12.24.

Sticky Rice Restaurant was recommended to me by a woman who spent most of her life in Bangkok. She was very honest with me in telling me that some of the Thai restaurants I have frequented are pretty average. After eating at Sticky Rice, I understand what she means.

Stick Rice features exquisite dishes from Northern Thailand in addition to the already known Pad Thai noodle dishes and the like that are featured on most Thai menus around the city. The name of the restaurant comes from Northern Thailand's consumption of glutinous rice with every meal in substitution of jasmine rice. According to the web site, Northern Thais eat sticky rice with their hands, very much like how bread is dipped in soup. I used mine the same way I use bread at an Italian or French restaurant – I soaked up all that wonderful sauce.