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Lots of yums at Tum Rub Thai
Thai salads, called yums, are a wonderful blend of tastes and textures, perfect for hot summer days. Tum Rub Thai offers yums and much more in Palm Harbor.
By CHRIS SHERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 7, 2000
[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
Snapper Lad Prig, front, is among the many seafood delights offered at Tum Rub Thai. Also shown are the chicken sa-teh appetizer, top, mud sa mon gai, center, a chicken dish with yellow curry, coconut milk, potatoes, peanuts and onions, and at right, tom kha gai, chicken in a cream of coconut soup with mushrooms.
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One reason that Thai food has been such a hit is the playful way it sounds to English-trained ears as well as how it tastes in the mouth. Pad Thai and nam sod may be a little clunky, but you have to smile at a place called Tum Rub Thai with a long list of yums.
I'm particularly partial to yums. What a perfect name for a salad that combines cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts, cold meat, seafood and Thailand's toy box of flavors -- rice vinegar, fish sauce, peanuts, lemongrass, peppers, ginger, mints, basils and more. This kind of refreshing, healthful eating and cooking is as ideal for Florida as it is for Southeast Asia.
With its combination of protein and vegetables and the balance of sweet and sour, yum might be considered an entire meal in a pickle. That's a high compliment from the Nibbler, except no cucumber slice can carry the spectrum of flavors in most yums -- although in Thai land, they try.
Tum Rub, a new restaurant that has injected surprisingly handsome style in a plain-Jane strip center behind a Chick fil-A on U.S. 19, brought eight yums as well as Thai grace to this bare spot.
Forget the signature yum, however; it's just shrimp and chicken on iceberg with sweet peanut sauce. Pride of place should go to dishes like yum squid, which Thais steam so tenderly, or chicken and bean thread, or green papaya with shrimp and green beans.
Each is brightened with hints of lemon, ginger and chili paste, and festooned with sculpted cukes, butterflies and roses of carrots. Do ask for yums at least medium hot, preferably more. Mildly hot is way too mild.
Nam sod is a Nibbler favorite because I rarely get to pass pork off as a salad. Thai cooks do it with pork, ginger, peanuts, cucumbers, a bit of lemon -- and here too much bell pepper (most boring of chilies).
Few appetizers compare with yums, but soups are my second favorite part of a Thai meal, and they can be yummy too. The national favorite is tom yum poh tak, a dish which mixes seafood with the crisp punch of lemongrass. Tom kha gai, described as a cream of coconut soup, celebrates one of cuisine's rare but glorious excesses. Of all the fattening coconut milk in Thai food, this soup may be its best use -- luscious texture set off by citrusy lemongrass, gingery galanga and chile.
On an underground gourmet budget, pad Thai is more than enough to add to your soup and salad; the famous noodles-and-more dish here is lively and long on chili (I'd add some lemon). If you must spend more, look to the sea. Tum Rub stocks a big selection of scallops, frog legs, whole snapper and lobster, four ways. One is to have a lobster tail served over a sea of veggies in sweet panang curry sauce with a couple of shrimp and jumbo scallops, a wow of a presentation, good eating -- and evidence that there are more ways to skin a lobster than we usually see.
Frog legs and whole fish are Nibbler favorites in Thai restaurants, and I like the preparation of both here, the first with basil leaves, the second with chili paste as lad prig. Both suffered, however, by frying with a heavy batter. I'd prefer both fried with a crisper crust, or try them on a grill.
To prove that Thai cooking can bust bellies and budgets too, Tum Rub has a longer list of desserts, not just lychees, coconut ice cream and those crisp bananas, but Thai doughnuts, fried puffs with a sauce of condensed milk and peanuts.
Enough. Meals here are sweet enough, in the surprising flavors in soups and salads and in the genteel service at every course. And too sweet in the house wines (Singha beer or bottles of riesling and zinfandel are better choices).
The eyes, however, are always pleased here. What might have been a pizza place or luncheonette is now a cool, high-ceilinged space that shows off delicate aesthetics from carpentry. I wasn't surprised to learn this is the second restaurant from the owners of Thai Bay, which brought gourmet Thai to Largo a few years ago.
North Pinellas should be delighted. Tum Rub doesn't need to sweeten its offerings or tame its fires. We know that the contrast and balance of salty, sour, hot and bitter are part of the fun, and we'd like even more.
Yum.
REVIEW
Tum Rub Thai
32716 U.S. 19 N, Palm Lake Shopping Center, Palm Harbor; (727) 781-3515
Hours: Lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday; dinner, 5 to 10 p.m. nightly.
Reservations: Accepted
Credit cards: MC, V
Details: Beer, wine. No smoking.
Wheelchair access: Good
Prices: Lunch $4.95 to $6.95; dinner, $7.95 to $19.95.
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