Chang Thai
Tourist Street,
Buġibba

Food: 8/10
Service: 7/10
Ambience: 6/10
Value: 8/10
Overall: 7/10

The colour of Buġibba is greige. The tired-looking apartment blocks are greige, the streets are greige, the people are greige. This is the place where beauty and good taste go to die. It is depressingly ugly. In this heaving hellhole parking spaces are hard to come by. And so we circled this maze, haunted by unsettling sights and smells.

In one grimy, grotty road, in the midst of quality establishments – greasy spoons, dreary pubs and seedy hotels – you’ll find a Thai restaurant. Push open the door and you are hit by a cool calmness. This is the recently opened Chang Thai restaurant, named after the iconic symbol of Thailand, the elephant. Thai cuisine is absolutely fantastic and it is a great pity that it is so under-represented in Malta.

I will go to great lengths to eat Thai food and that includes navigating Bugibba’s back streets.

First impressions count for something: the restaurant was spotless, the staff were charming and very welcoming, the bench I sat on was incredibly uncomfortable, the hand painted blue and white, Thai ceramic crockery prettified the tables. Of course, second impressions are what really matter.

We worked our way through the mouthful of a menu, all the while munching on prawn crackers. These deep fried, fluffy crackers are eaten throughout Asia as a snack food. Lighter than air, the Italians call them nuvole di drago (dragon clouds).

The tapioca starch extracted from Cassava gives the crackers their unique texture and explosive crunch. In case you were wondering, prawn crackers do in fact contain prawn meat, about 20 to 38 per cent to be precise. The principal ingredient remains the tapioca starch.

Unquestionably one of Buġibba’s few saving graces

Thai meals are all about communal eating. We started off by sharing the Chang Thai mixed platter. The appetizers served were beautifully presented and quite excellent. The pork and shrimp steamed dumplings, topped with fresh coriander leaves for an extra zing, practically melted in the mouth. The vegetable and pork spring rolls were both well executed... crispy and not greasy in the slightest. The Thai fish cakes were delicious and the tender chicken satay was  mouth-wateringly good.

We ended with a Thai treat –the golden money bag was a crunchy, deep-fried delight, the golden brown parcel packed with fresh vegetables and fried to crisp perfection.

For mains we shared two dishes, the Pla Meak Ma Now and the Klang Pad Ped Yang, served alongside steaming bowls of white rice.

Pla Meak Ma Now is a stir fry composed of tender, steamed squid seasoned with chilli, coriander, garlic, kaffir lime leaf and lemongrass. This stunning seafood dish sizzled with afresh, fragrant vibrancy that was perhaps to be expected when taking the key ingredients into account. Kaffir limes are knobby, gnarly little things native to Southeast Asia.

It is not the lime itself so much as the leaves and the zest of the rind that are prized for cooking and indispensable in a Thai kitchen. The juice and pulp of this citrus fruit are generally considered far too pungent and overpowering to be used in cooking. Exuding the exotic, the aromatic leaves and zest produce a signature fragrance that makes Thai food refreshingly unique. As a matter of fact, the kaffir lime cannot be substituted for other kinds of citrus. Its highly distinct fragrance is quite irreplaceable.

Used in much the same way as the western world uses the bay leaf, kaffir leaves are most commonly used to flavour soups, stocks, curries and stir fries; infusing them with an intense, spiced-citrus flavour. With their lime-lemon essence, the leaves’ aroma work especially well with fish dishes. The leaves’ citric flavours also blend beautifully with lemongrass. The two are in fact often paired together in a Southeast Asian bouquet garni, along with ginger. Lemongrass is a wonderful, sweetly aromatic herb that is precious to many Thai recipes.

It flavours many traditional dishes, adding a unique, lemony flavour and a zestiness that goes beyond what can be extracted from other citrus fruit. The combination of chilli, coriander and garlic, along with kaffir lime leaf and lemongrass made for a squid dish that was staggeringly good.

Klang Pad Ped Yang comprised another authentic Thai dish of bold, explosive flavour, beautiful in its display of colours and textures. Pad ped is a red curry served with meat. In this case, duck was the chosen protein. Chang Thai’s offering was quite fabulous, composed of layers of flavours that chose to reveal themselves slowly but surely, in the course of each mouthful.

There is a burning heat and colour from the red chillies, the backbone of this spicy curry, and a warm spiciness from the cumin, the coriander and the barely sweet ginger. There is pungency and depth of flavour which the garlic brings and  sweetness from the tomatoes and pineapple.

There is zestiness from the aromatics, the lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, that perfectly lift this coconut-based curry. Spicy, salty, sweet and aromatic, this arresting combination of flavours was as thrilling as a Bangkok food market. The ingredients are fried together in a hot oil that coaxes out every ounce of flavour. This complex combination of tastes fuses beautifully before being cooked with coconut milk, stock and the meltingly tender duck meat, resulting in a curry that is intensely rich and creamy. I loved it!

We ended our meal as we had begun by gorging on more deep fried fare. The Asians simply love deep frying their fruit. The Chinese have even gone so far as to deep fry chunks of watermelon.

At Chang Thai, deep-fried banana, a popular Thai street food, was the undisputed dessert of choice. The battered banana, light and fluffy, hot from the pan and served with some lovely coconut ice cream was sinfully good. The juxtaposition of hot and cold was heavenly.

Serving rustic, fresh Thai food that eats well, Chang Thai is unquestionably one of Buġibba’s few saving graces.  Once inside, the insanity beyond the restaurant’s doors melts away and you are soon made to remember why you fell in love with Thai food in the first place.

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