Today we went to the Halloween Cat Show at the Halifax Forum! There were, sadly, no Sphynxes to be seen, but there were some Rexes and Oriental Shorthairs (which Des loved because they looked like they wouldn’t shed very much), some Maine Coons (which I loved because I love GIANT cats!) and the tiniest cutest five month old calico entered in the household pet category (which EVERYONE in the entire show loved. It was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen).

Added hilarity – some of the judges were costumed, so at, say, the Vampire Ring, the young francophone man who was judging was wearing heavy eyeliner, dress pants, a white collared shirt and a black flowing cape. It was just great! They also had a special category for all the black cats, where they seemed to favour the household pets. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen two housecats, a Scottish Fold, a Rex, an Oriental Shorthair and a couple of Persians, all black, staring out of cages and surrounded by Halloween decorations. My favourite moment of the show was a little smush-faced cat who was being judged by the vampire, who, as usual, dangled a little fishing toy in front of the kitty. (I don’t know if it shows the judges something they need to know about alertness, or if it’s just to keep them from running away, but that’s what they do.) The cat, instead of just batting at it as usual, bit hard on it and refused to let it go no matter who tried to distract him, and growled threateningly when anyone tried to take it away. Most tenacious kitty should be the Miss Congeniality equivalent!

Des and I actually had the whole weekend off together this week! A very unusual circumstance, granted, tempered by my rather dreadful cold which forced us to forgo anything strenuous or that would put us in the cold for long, or out at all late. But we decided that at the least we would make up for our lack of any recent nights out by having dinner out TWICE this weekend! Oh, yes! So, we settled on a Thai place just down the street from Gingergrass where we had eaten yesterday – first because it looked good, and second because though Gingergrass is Vietnamese and Thai, we’d both had Vietnamese main courses, so we felt some Thai was in order.

To preface this, we have been to one Thai place in Halifax so far (not including Gingergrass, because, as I said, we basically experienced it as a Vietnamese restaurant). That was Baan Thai at 1569 Dresden Row on the second floor. It was recommended to us by Where To Eat In Canada, which is basically my family’s bible, so I was completely unsurprised but still thrilled to find that I LOVED it. All the better, we went as a group of six, so though we all got our own dishes, we also got the opportunity to try a bunch of different entrees. So, I can safely recommend Baan Thai’s spring rolls, lettuce wraps, bamboo pork, sweet and sour chicken, cashew chicken, pad thai, basil chicken and (my dish) spicy shrimp, as well as fried bananas.

So onto the new place: Talay Thai at 1261 Barrington Street. And the eternal question: get what we know we like and compare it to a place we’ve been, or try something new. And, since we’re us, we settled upon familiar appetizers (usually cause we’ll get just something inexpensive and nibbly and the cheap appetizer tends to be the same everywhere) and desserts (usually because I’ve never been able to turn down Gulab Jamun in Indian places, fried banana at Thai places, and chocolate cake or brownies anywhere else!) with main courses we’d never tried before. The appetizers were along the same lines as the spring rolls we had yesterday – called “Fresh Spring Rolls” here, they similarly had the soft rice paper wrapped around noodles, and some vegetables (in this case, bean sprouts, cucumbers and carrots), though it also had a sprig of coriander which I found a little strong, but that’s a personal thing. The tamarind sauce they supplied for dipping is my new favourite tamarind sauce, bar none. Plus the presentation was top notch!

As a main course, I had my heart set on trying a Thai curry – I LOVE Indian curries, so I felt I owed Thailand a taste, as it were. I settled on yellow curry, just because I’d heard from unverifiable and unsubstantiated sources that it was the most like Indian curry. I figured, if it IS the most like Indian, it’ll be nice intro, if not, it’ll be just as random a choice as if I did a meeny-miny-mo. And I decided on prawn, since I loved the Thai shrimp at Baan Thai. Des initially stuck with his apparent commitment to getting pork at Asian restaurants, but decided he was in a beef mood, and picked out the black pepper beef instead. And they were both great choices! We were so excited when they arrived that we forgot to take pictures until halfway through the meal – so the portions pictured are really only half of what we got! Des was definitely the winner tonight.  That beef was fantastic – light and tender cuts of meat with green peppers and Chinese mushrooms (I don’t like mushrooms, but he assured me they were surprisingly good!) as well as (obviously) black pepper. The sauce was a little spicy by itself, but with the beef it was just tasty – it was a soupy sauce, not thick at all, so the beef had absorbed it and was full and moist.

As for my dish, I was really impressed by the number of prawn I got – they were a good size and I got over a dozen in my order easily! And the taste of the curry was interesting, with the veggies (snow peas, celery, green onions and green peppers) adding a nice lightness since it was a creamy sauce. But not my new favourite thing – sadly, I think I’m becoming a wimp about spices again. When I was waitressing at an Indian place in Moncton, I couldn’t be phased anymore – I’d have the extra spicy Vindaloo and really enjoy the flavour, but now I’m back to being ok with mid-level spiciness, but really just preferring it not be there.  M’oh. In any case, yellow curry was definitely worth trying and all the ingredients were great, but just not quite to my personal taste.

We finished off the meal with the fried banana, but it was different than any I’d seen before. It had little specks of something in the batter, which turned out to be mint. It was neat…. but, to return to my refrain for the evening, just not quite to my taste. So that was all the courses – lovely to look at, and each piece being creatively put together and nicely prepared, but just not for me. But I refuse to be one of those people who is all “Well, I guess we’ll stick to Baan Thai from now on” because that would be silly. If banana is what I want, then Baan Thai it will be, but Talay was nice enough to warrant further visits to see how they manage with dishes I KNOW I like elsewhere.

Des had better start getting more weekends off. A girl could get used to this!

Also, more pictures of the cat show and dinner on the Picasa page.

Tags: Cats, Halifax, Restaurants
This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 00:26 UTC and is filed under personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.