WHO’S IN CHARGE
It took Pookie Akarasereepoowapon 10 years to find her way to owning her own place — the wonderful Eggs & Thai Café in Dedham Center. The Bangkok-born Marlborough resident moved to the United States in 2008 and spent her first year working in the kitchen of her aunt’s restaurant in Nashua. But Akarasereepoowapon didn’t want to cook — she wanted to serve people and run a restaurant’s front of house. To do that, she realized she had to learn to speak English well and spent the next three years back in the kitchen while studying the language. It took her another five years of working as a server at Framingham’s Pho Dakao to save the money to buy Eggs & Thai from its previous owner. Since opening in July 2018, word of mouth has drawn guests for lunch and dinner. “Business is good,” said its smiling owner.
THE LOCALE
Dedham Square continues to surprise as vibrant new businesses, cafes, and restaurants move into old spaces, enlivening the small city center. Eggs & Thai is on the fringe of the busy square — a mere block up High Street — in a half-subterranean space down a small side alley. The pristine little restaurant is a 37-seat space with peach-colored walls, marble tabletops, and various homey decorations: a lit candle, a fireplace hung on one wall, white lattice work behind a rattan table, flowers, colorful curtains, wall sconces.
ON THE MENU
Eggs & Thai Cafe’s wonderful basil half duck.
There’s something so gently insistent about the flavors of Thai food. They’re complex, yet not heavy, with various echoes of coconut, chili, holy basil, lemongrass, lime leaf, the ginger-like galangal, and the umami base notes that a bit of fish sauce lends. Eggs & Thai’s menu is large, with many variations on themes listed among the different appetizers, soups, salads, rice plates, stir-fries, noodles, and curries.
If you get lost, ask Akarasereepoowapon what to have: She’s the warm heart and soul of this unassuming restaurant. There’s so much good to eat here. Take the shrimp mango avocado curry ($19), and you should! It’s a fragrant light curry filled with large shrimp and hunks of perfectly ripe, slightly cooked avocado and mango that are exciting to eat in a hot dish.
The shrimp won ton soup ($6) is a rich broth with its chilies, sweetness, and lime hitting you all at once. Another soup, the chicken noodle ($13), has an overly mild broth but the fresh Chinese broccoli, cilantro, and scallions in it are good and it’s fun to eat Thai-style with a spoon in one hand and a fork for the noodles in the other.
The Thai broccoli ($8), made with Chinese broccoli, is a fine dish — the chard-like leaves and sweet stalks of this wonderful vegetable handled beautifully and rendered tender and meaty. The fresh rolls ($9) are light, springy rice paper roll-ups stuffed with perky baby lettuces, carrots, basil, shrimp (or tofu), and vermicelli: I would choose them over the somewhat tough chicken satay ($9). Not so the tender basil half duck ($23). This dish is served on a white platter with two fantastically crispy legs over moist meat served atop a stir fry of fresh vegetables.
The wide rice noodles in the drunken noodles ($11/$14) satisfy with every mouthful of this eggy, broccoli, onion, pepper, and carrot stir-fry and the pad Thai ($11/$14) is just as good. Be sure to consult with Akarasereepoowapon about how spicy you want your dishes: This wonderful kitchen runs hot!
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