University Dining Days

It's University City's Dining Days until tomorrow night. I know it's awfully late to be letting people know about it if they don't already do, so my apologies for that, but keep an eye out for it next time around. Dining Days is a great deal that about 15 or so restaurants in University City take part in. The restaurants have either $15, $25, or $30 fixed menus with 3 courses with their specialties for you to try. You can check out the link here.

Last night, my co-worker, her daughter, Cody, and I went to Vientiane Restaurant at 47 and Baltimore Ave. It's a great little Laotion/Thai restaurant in a great neighborhood by Clark Park. I really wish I took some pictures of our meals - I definitely have to remember to start doing that more often if I want to be blogging about food.

I had a delicious naam salad (marinated rice, coconut, mint, scallions, lime, chili, and lettuce to wrap the salad in), stir-fried silver noodles, coconut and rice pudding, and a Thai iced tea. This was all for $15. The portions were smaller than what I expected, but when I was finished eating I was pleasantly full. Everything I had was so so so good, not to mention they looked beautiful.

Some of the other dishes ordered were fresh spring rolls, Asian sticky wings, papaya salad, chicken pad thai, red curry, and vegetarian laab. I tried everything (except for the curry - mainly due to my curry experience a few weeks ago) and I thought everything was really good, except for the pad thai. I mean it was good, but it was lacking something. There was no real kick to it, and there weren't enough vegetables for my taste. I also prefer shrimp and tofu in my pad thai rather than chicken. Maybe I'm too spoiled because I've been to Tamarind on South St. and Chabaa in Manayunk too many times. Those are top notch pad thais.

I'd like to mention that I even tried everyone else's desserts - banana chocolate spring rolls and steam sweet rice with red beans and bananas. I liked the sweet rice - the bananas were more like plantains - but the spring roll was nasty. I hate bananas more than anything else, except for maybe bleu cheese. I will say mine was by far the best - yum yum.

I would suggest Vientiane to people living in University City, but I don't think I'd be so quick to suggest it to people from outside of the general area. It's kind of a pain to get to. I think there are better Thai places in better locations. I would be more inclined to recommend Tamarind, or if you want a Laotian place I'd say to try the one at 11th and Washington.

If you want to check out Vientiane's menu, as well as what other people are saying, click here.

I'm going to Atlantic City's Food and Wine Festival this weekend, so I plan on taking lots of pictures and taking notes. If you're interested in attending, tickets are $35 each and the dates are August 1st and 2nd. Thanks to Foodaphilia for picking me as a ticket winner!!