Find It...

Viphalay

Viphalay
10724-95 St., 423-3213
What can I say? I’ve been on a real hot streak with great little family-run restaurants lately. It all started with MOR Turkish Cuisine, and continued through Ah Yah Mi Deh! Caribbean Restaurant to Mexico Lindo. How glad I am to report that it continues this week with Viphalay. I’ve already got a couple of favourites for Thai food (with touches of Lao and Bornean) in town, including the nearby Boualouang, but Viphalay is where I want to go the next time I hanker for some Thai food—there is so much of the menu I still want to try. In fact, I’d be pleased to sample just about all of it.
The Mounma family have made their space tasteful and are friendly and helpful and all that, but really, the reason to go to Viphalay is the food. My co-diner and I tried to cover as much ground as we could but, as you’ll witness if you visit www.viphalay.com, the menu is too long and varied for two guys to make much of a dent in it. All the same, we did our best.
It started with the appetizer platter ($14.99), our attempt to take in as much of the starter menu as we could in one dish, as it entitled us to a “smattering” of red wine shrimp, tofu stuffed with mushrooms and pork, fish cakes, shrimp and pineapple triangles, wontons filled with creamcheese and crab, and mini shrimp rolls. Dunked in sweet chili sauce, everything was pretty tasty—okay, my co-diner expressed reservations about the rubbery fish cakes—but the hands-down winner was the zesty, pepper-flecked red wine shrimp, a full portion of which I fantasize about in my future. Something else non-deepfried in the selection would have been welcome.
After a brief dispute with the server over whether I ordered the dum mak hoong ($6.99) or the tom yum (I can’t believe my pronunciation was that bad), we persuaded him that we really did mean to order Lao papaya salad and not soup. The crunchy, spicy salad of shredded papaya, carrot, and slices of tomato in a pungent dressing of fish sauce and lime was one of my favourite street foods in Thailand, though the standard quantity of chili pepper can be devastating. Viphalay took it easy on us, but the intense flavours still made it feel like my tongue was glowing.
Next came the chu chi bah ($13.99)—fish in red curry. I believe the variety of fish changes according to availability, and on this visit we were lucky enough to receive a big, beautiful pan-seared salmon steak aswim in rich coconut curry sauce, crisscrossed with spears of red pepper. We raved about the savoury-sweet creaminess that bathed the firm but fall-apart-tender fish to our server, who said next time we’d have to try the piew van bah (sweet and sour fish), a house specialty. Duly noted. I should also mention that the coconut rice ($3.99) was perfect under all that sauce.
We were beginning to wonder if we really needed more food, but there was still an order of phut kieh mow ($8.99)—drunken noodles with beef—on the way. A mass of pan-fried noodles tossed with tender-crisp mixed vegetables and beef convinced us to make a little more room. This was definitely the spiciest dish of the night, but still so well-seasoned with garlic, lemongrass, soy sauce, and a hint of sweetness that plenty of flavour came through.
Some of the food had to come home with us, and here’s something that really impressed me: when I went after the leftovers the next day, I found that they had packed everything that was left on our platters, even the teensy remainder of papaya salad I didn’t think they’d bother with. Those drunken noodles, tangled up with crunchy chunks of broccoli, cauliflower and peppers, were even better the next day. Fantastic: I now have no fear of ordering way too much food the next time I visit.