Thai Recipe Restaurant - Authentic? WHO CARES, IT'S DELICIOUS!

Thai Recipe, 404 E. Thompson Road, is (say it with me) in a strip mall and the storefront is so small you might miss it if you're not looking for it.  The dining room is bigger than it looks from outside, thank Heaven, and it is very well-appointed with simple but elegant furniture and decoration.  Simple but elegant describes the food, as well:  For lunch I ordered Pad Thai (stir-fried rice noodles with scallions, bean sprouts, little bits of egg, and ground peanuts in peanut sauce) with pork, which was FANDAMTASTIC, and The Little Woman had Original Fried Rice with shrimp, which was soooo tasty I almost wish I'd ordered it instead.  Both dishes came with elegantly presented Tom Yum soup, a spicy semi-clear broth with two little cubes of tofu and a leaf of cilantro floating in it, and a vegetable spring roll, both of which were incredibly flavorful. All that for $7.78 each!  

They give you a choice of 4 spice levels:  Mild, Medium, Hot, and Thai Hot.  Hey, I love spicy food, so I ordered mine Hot, and it was right at that fine line between "Wow That's Tasty But Almost Too Hot" and "Where's The Damn' Milk Already!".  I imagine if you order the Thai Hot they also give you the business card of a good plastic surgeon to repair your melted face....  Mau!  (Sorry, I don't know any Thai words, so I stole that terrible Vietnamese line from The Deer Hunter.)

Smokehouse on Shelby: Great 'Cue, Sides are Hit 'n Miss.

(D'oh!  I wrote this in February, forgot to publish it.)
Smokehouse on Shelby is in the Fountain Square Theatre Building in the heart of, you guessed it, Fountain Square.  It's a really neat space right on the northwest corner of the building (I think when the building opened in the 1920's it was a big drugstore) that is a little bit dark, but with huge windows through which you can watch the passing hipsters, BluIndy shared electric cars, and people on ungainly PACER rental bicycles.  The huge dining area has like 20-foot ceilings, giant old B-movie ad posters on the walls, and 60's-era booths and tables.

Some colleagues went there to celebrate one guy's birthday, and since he's even older'n me and soon to be retired and/or dead, I figured I'd better attend.  I ordered their signature Barbecued Brisket sandwich, which comes with a pickle and two sides, and I ordered a BLT to go for The Little Woman.  They have quite an array of side items, so I had mustard potato salad and coleslaw, and she got mac 'n cheese and sweet potato fries.

I'll cut to the chase:  the Brisket Sandwich was EXCELLENT, cooked just right and very smokey and on a delicious soft roll, while the BLT was very good, with really tasty Applewood bacon and fresh lettuce and tomato.  The accompanying sweet potato fries, too, were GREAT!   The coleslaw and mac 'n cheese , however, were lackluster, being rather bland and tasteless.  I'm not a big fan of Miracle Whip, but Good Lord, man, you simply MUST use it in coleslaw, 'cause if you don't, the result is basically just milky cabbage.  They at least TRIED to create flavor with two kinds of cheese food in the mac 'n cheese, but whatever variety of Kraft singles they melted to make the sauce was 'way too mild.  So, IMHO, I will go back there again, but will stick with the MEAT and SWEET POTATOES.