The elephant in this room is superb
DINING: Food, service, atmosphere top-notch
| Wednesday, May 20 2009 06:33 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, May 20 2009 06:33 PM
8200 Stockdale Highway
833-8190
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday.
Prices: Lunch $8.95-$12.95. Dinner: appetizers $5.95-$8.95, soup and salad $8.50-$16.95, curry $10.95, vegetarian $10.95, rice and noodles $8.95-$14.95, traditional Thai entrees $14-$21. Child's plate not available.
Payment: MasterCard and VISA accepted. Does not accept American Express, Discover, personal checks or The Californian's Press Pass.
Dress: Casual.
Amenities: Wheelchair accessible; beer and wine available; some vegetarian options.
Food: HHH1/2
Atmosphere: HHH
Service: HHH1/2
Value: HHH
Next week: Camille's Sidewalk Cafe
BLUE ELEPHANT
Images
Felix Adamo / The Californian Syed Khizer, right, and Sarina Rojvithee sample the fine Thai cuisine during lunch at the Blue Elephant.
Felix Adamo / The Californian Cashew chicken at the Blue Elephant .
Felix Adamo / The Californian Vegetable Thai plate at the Blue Elephant .
Felix Adamo / The Californian The lunch crowd fills the tables quickly at the Blue Elephant.
Felix Adamo / The Californian Blue Elephant server Duke Rojvithee delivers two plates of fresh Thai cuisine to a couple's table.
It's pretty exciting to discover a brand new restaurant that impresses, especially before word gets out.
When we first visited Blue Elephant, a new Thai restaurant in the Albertsons shopping center at the corner of Stockdale Highway and Gosford Road, we were the only customers in the place. The only person who came in was a young man who asked if they offered "takeaway." For a brief moment, I thought I was in England.
The restaurant had been open a month, our waiter explained, but word had not gotten out yet. I think it eventually will, as impressive as our experience was. We have done really well in recent years with Thai restaurants in Bakersfield, pretty lucky if you ask me, but Blue Elephant will surely take the competition to a new level, not because they have stunning new foods, but because the freshness of the ingredients was a real attraction. This is one elephant that could grow.
If you love Little Italy, you'll probably love this place. It has the same owner, who refers to himself only as Chang. He said regular customers who knew he was Thai were asking him for some of his special dishes, so he decided to open a sister restaurant specializing in those.
On our visit we ordered some of the standards of the cuisine: a chicken sate appetizer ($6.95), pad thai noodles ($8.95) and a couple of entrees, the prawns with asparagus ($16) and the chicken basil ($14). Everything was outstanding, starting with the four skewers of chicken, hints of coriander and possibly coconut milk evident in the boneless, grilled breast meat, and a nice peanut sauce on the side with a cucumber-purple onion salad.
The menu calls the noodles "the dish that made Thai food famous," and if you've ever had Thai food you've probably enjoyed these clear rice noodles prepared here with a choice of chicken or beef (shrimp is $4 extra), ground up peanuts and a sauce that is all at once sour-salty-sweet-spicy. With vegetables like bean sprouts and green onion thrown in and strands of cabbage and julienne carrot shavings on top, it was a solid representation of the classic dish.
My companion loves asparagus and she chose that shrimp entrée off the traditional list. It was prepared with a light garlic-soy-shitake mushroom sauce, six jumbo shrimp and exceedingly fresh and firm asparagus stalks. I might have conceded that my chicken with basil was less interesting, with its onion, red pepper strips, carrot discs and green beans, but its distinctive minty notes made it fresh and new to me.
Other interesting menu items included the salmon green curry ($15), the roasted duck with red curry ($15, with half a boneless roast duck), the Masaman curry lamb shank ($18) and the shrimp with eggplant ($16).
Oh, and the angel wings appetizer ($6.95, deboned chicken wings stuffed with noodles and onions -- Yum!). I should note that they have a separate vegetarian menu with four different dishes, and something tells me they'd whip up other selections on request.
Service was superb. My companion noted that our waiter had a "gentle sweetness" to his work, approaching us almost shyly but always smiling and quiet. You felt like you were a guest in his house.
He even packed up the leftovers for us in the kitchen, a touch I always appreciate. And the atmosphere in this white tablecloth restaurant is also not cookie cutter. My companion noted the wonder wood wall facing the door. She said the waiter told her that his uncle had made that by hand.
Blue Elephant can be recommended for a fine dining experience.
