After Rain
Fusion Thai Restaurant
Located in the parking lot of the T&T grocery store in Mississauga

Dubbing itself as a Fusion Thai restaurant, I walked inside to a modern – classical decor restaurant. Looking around I notice large parties scattered within. A staff walks closer to me and greets me, “anyung haseyo.” Noticing that this isn’t quite the greeting Thailanders use (that means hello in Korean), I smile and say, table for three please.

She walks us through the restaurant, past the bar with a brick backing to it, past a table of 10, turning a corner that bends away from the private closed rooms, and onto a platform that overlooks another large party. We finally get to a table, beside a party of 8 Koreans.

I sit down sunken in my seat, noticing the table is much higher than it should be. I open the menu and find a plethora of options to tempt my taste buds. As I was fairly hungry by this time, I wasn’t too picky as to what to order. I did, however, have a craving for something hearty.

I chose the Thai red curry, which had the two chili pepper rating beside it. With an appetizer of chicken and vegetable spring rolls, I was all set. We place our orders:

2 spring rolls, $4.95
Red Thai curry with beef, $10.95
Tom Yom seafood noodle soup, $11.95
Kalbi (beef ribs), $13.95
Tom Yom soup, small portion, $3.95

It wasn’t long after they took our order that the first plate came to our table. Interestingly enough, this was edamame beans, which were typically Japanese styled. Salted to the right amount, but slightly over-boiled, this was still a good beginning.

I look around the room to see that the entire place reminded me somewhat of room in a royalty’s house. The plush couches that lined the booths were velvety red, the chairs, a deep brown sturdy structure. The private “rooms” each had their own chandeliers, while the golden wallpapered walls matched nicely to the dark chocolate brown wood of the bottom half of the walls. Besides the chandeliers, sunken pot lights lined the ceilings all around.

After my brief observation, a man came to our table and served us a plate of what looked like a round pancake of fish roe. We asked what this was as it was evident none of us had ordered it. He quietly says, “it’s service” and leaves as quickly as he had come. After further inspection, it turned out to be sushi pizza. Something I did not see on the menu, and something we were not at all expecting. The pizza consisted of a fairly thick layer of rice in pancake form, deep fried to golden perfection. On top were various thinly sliced raw fish (salmon most likely) smothered in some kind of mayonnaise-based sauce, and covering those was a generous layer of tobiko (flying fish roe). A great appetizer – free at that – but one that would easily fill you up with that thick layer of rice.

Shortly thereafter, our salads came. The vinaigrette dressing was slightly on the mild side and I wished for something more substantial a taste. However, the cold and crisp iceberg lettuce, mixed with tomatoes and cucumbers was refreshing after the sushi pizza. Alongside these sides also came a side order of kimchi and takuan. All these are typical complimentary side dishes in a Korean restaurant, and therefore we felt this no different than one.

The Thai Red curry, in its steamy hot bowl, was deserving of its two chili pepper rating as I found it almost too spicy to my liking. While I can withstand a relatively high amount of spiciness, this one got to me… at the beginning. With the dish being so hot to start off with, it accentuates the spiciness. However, once I let the dish cool down a little, I found it more bearable and was able to eat it without any fuss. The large portion of rice was more than enough for me, and the delicately cut full length sliced carrot was a nice garnish to the dish. Overall, the taste was very creamy, rich, with large chunks of vegetables. While some may complain that it was too sweet, I thought otherwise, thinking back to my visit to Spoon and Fork, where their dishes seemed overly sugared.

The Tom Yom soup with noodles was also a pleasant one with its equally large chunks of vegetables in a spiced soup with a hint of sweetness to it.

And finally, the kalbi. Ever so tender, medium thickness, and a tad on the sweet side. Nonetheless, the BBQ hint was there and it was well marinated to my likings.

At the very end, while most places would serve you a portion of an orange to refresh your mouth, this place generously gave us three thick sections of an orange, which was a great way to end off all the sweetness we had in our meals.

Overall, I found each dish to be plentiful. Almost too much at times. I felt the portions could have been slightly smaller and at the same time, lowering the prices accordingly wouldn’t hurt either.

Nonetheless, it was a good experience in my book, and I certainly wouldn’t mind going there again to try out their other dishes. I missed out on their great looking desserts like fried peach and ice cream, since I was too full by the time I finished my dinner.

One last note about their service. Definitely nothing to complain about here as our waitor was super friendly always attending to our needs. Water was always filled before even having to ask for a refill, and the other waiters and waitresses were equally helpful and willing to help. Note, all of the waiters and waitresses were Korean!

Looking forward to a next visit!