Ben A.
Yelp
Sometimes you make a plan, you have a goal. Like a Grandmaster, you strategically place your pieces, you build your traps and your toys, you shop, your pack, you consider what is worth sacrificing, what is worth placing at risk. You execute.
You hope. Like Andy Dufresne, you Hope.
And then, it's Wednesday, you're 400 miles from home, your plans fell through, and you're sitting alone in a hotel room wishing you could get in your car and drive home but you didn't pay for this conference--someone else did--and you really didn't care about the conference anyway, it was all about the fishing, but the fish didn't bite, and you lost three pawns, a rook, and the Queen, and you're in check, and Shawshank was actually on TV, but it was on TNT so they edited it for television and cut the language and there's no one to watch it with anyway, and I forgot my toothbrush and had to use that terrible one from the front desk until I could Uber to a CVS the next day during a break in the conference, and you're so frustrated and sad, you're mixing up your metaphors, and did I mention its only Wednesday, dammit?
Yep, that's when you order Thai food in your hotel room on GrubHub, and eat all by yourself. Even though you were sort of hankering for Ramen and sake.
Thai stick. Yeah, I know what it means [insert maple leaf emoji icon here, because it's the closest thing but the wrong color]. But it's also the name of this restaurant, and I didn't even read the reviews before ordering. I just clicked on Pad Thai and Tom Ka Gai, click, tip, wait 34-44 minutes, and it's here. Not sure if the person who delivered it also knows what Thai sticks are, but I'll bet she does.
The food was A-OK-ish. Color of the Pad Thai was a little too gray somehow-- it wasn't, like, aesthetically-pleasing to the eye, but had decent flavor. Probably swung more in the two-star range, but to their credit, I asked for hot, and it had pretty good spice. Gets ya right here [pointing at cheekbone with middle finger to indicate approximate area of right sinus.] Served in a clear plastic salad container. Stay gnarly and BPA-free, Burlingame.
The Tom Ka was also A-OK-ish. Arrived piping hot, which also swung this review into the three-range for me. Coconut milk broth was the right kind of spicy and had enough lime flavor, but pretty skimpy on the chicken and mushrooms. Too much ginger and lemon grass pieces in the soup. Hunks of whole tomato didn't improve the experience.
The worst kind of kidding is kidding yourself.... the awareness of which is called, adulting.