Restaurant Review: Thai Flavor

Lime green walls, a large fish tank, and an eager-to-serve staff welcomed us as we entered Thai Flavor, Harrisonburg's newest Thai restaurant. Located next to King Photo on 51 Kenmore Street (right off 33), the outside of the restaurant looks a little dismal compared to the brand-new sign. Upon arrival we found that we were the only customers at 7 p.m.; however, several other parties arrived shortly after. Thai Flavor restaurant accommodates around 40-50 people in a relatively small but bright dining room. Although it lacks music and appropriate lighting, the atmosphere reflects its youth.

The menu features a wide variety of foods, including soup, vermicelli, salad, many appetizers, several desserts, and 55 possible meal combinations. For appetizers, we ordered both the spring rolls and the egg rolls, which proved to be a colorful and tasty array and introduction to our meal. Thai Flavor offers "Thai-flavor" specialties, entrees, curry, noodles and fried rice, and vegetarian options similar to many Thai menus. Our dinner party sampled various dishes - the vermicelli with chicken being our favorite, and surprisingly, the Pad Thai our least favorite (although the vegetarian Pad Thai was much better). Our party really enjoyed the arrangement of the food and the beautiful blue and white dishes. Each place setting had silverware as well as chopsticks, which allowed us to attempt eating with the chopsticks briefly before switching to silverware.

One of my companions commented, "It's not the best Thai food I've ever had, but the service and the presentation were enjoyable." We really enjoyed our waitress; she was very welcoming and outgoing. She repeated what we wanted after we ordered and made sure that we were aware of all of our options: tofu? dried tofu? all of the vegetables or just some of them? She gladly split up our checks and bagged our leftovers, all with a smile on her face. Overall, I would recommend the restaurant if looking for a change of scenery from EMU favorite Taste of Thai, but I wouldn't list it in my top five Harrisonburg restaurants.