When I think back on the year that I lived in Fremont I can’t help but recall being surrounded by Thai restaurants. There is already a surplus of Thai restaurants in Seattle, but Fremont must be the capitol of Thai food in this city. Believe it or not, the entire year I lived there I never once made it to Chillies Paste. It was only when an ill-planned grocery store trip brought me back to the Fremont area that I gave Chillies Paste a shot.
The first thing I noticed when walking inside the house-converted-to-restaurant was not the striking orange walls but the beautiful pictures of the food. I’m considering firing myself as the seattlefoodster.com photographer and hiring their guy or gal.
I started off with Kong Kra-bok, shrimp wrapped with a thin wonton wrapper deep fried and served along side a sweet chili sauce. The presentation was on point, however I found these delicate starters difficult to eat for a couple of reasons. The first is that they are piping hot and the second is that the tails are still connected to the shrimp so you cannot really tell where the shrimp ends and the tail begins beneath the wrapper.
The next dish was the Pork Garlic Fried Rice. Although it looks slightly plain you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find tons of flavor and, of course, garlic in this dish. The only complaint here was that there was cilantro mixed throughout the dish and it was a tad hard to pick out.
The last dish up for tasting was a Thai favorite of mine, Pad See-Eew. This consists of wide stir-fired noodles with meat and veggies in a soy sauce. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with this dish. The noodles, meat and sauce were very bland and lacked flavor. The veggies, although they looked fresh, tasted a bit stale and overly starchy.
I really like the décor and style of Chilles Paste but the lackluster Pad See-Eew may force me to think twice before returning. The main problem for me is that while I really enjoyed two of the dishes, the third one was awful. All that said, I’m fairly certain I will give it one more shot and probably try something new and different to gauge the quality of their dishes.
