Soybean Asian Grille

Look at me! Back on the Pad Thai and Massaman curry hunt so soon.

Soybean Asian Grille, a new Thai place in Pike Creek Shopping Center outside of Wilmington, recently opened. I took one of those miserable, all-day-downpour days off from work (working in the rain sucks) to check things out.

Tucked in a large strip mall between Wilmington and Newark, Soybean Asian Grille is quite nice inside in that brand-spanking new, clean walls, crisp lines, dark lighting, I’m-trying-to-be-a-real-restaurant way. They need some wall hangings, though.

There’s a tiny bar right when you open the door that’s partitioned from the main dining room. Not sure why it’s separated, but it is. At 12 noon the lights were low, and gave an intimacy to the room and the impression of dinner dining.

If you dine in for lunch, a nice little side salad is included with your entrée. My salad came with tofu. Not sure if tofu is standard. I figure that the server astutely deduced from my two orders with tofu (one for there and one to go) that I would not be eating meat. The dressing was described as a peanut sauce. This dressing was thick and sweet – really the same sauce you get when you order saytay – not the lighter, tangier peanut sauce on some Thai salads. Either dressing suits me fine.

Confession: I eat fish sauce in Thai food when I’m dining out. I prefer not to, and I don’t like the taste or smell of it, but I can’t resist Thai food. It’s my one little vegetarian concession – a few micro milliliters of fish essence a year. Yep, I’m going to hell.

Fish sauce smells like wet dog to me, and I can easily detect it’s presence in dishes. Soybean Grille’s pad Thai reeked of fish sauce when it was set in front of me. I would say it was moderately heavy on the fish sauce compared to all the pad Thai’s I’ve eaten. The good thing about fish sauce is that after the first couple of bites, the smell disappears. Or maybe you just get used to it.

The noodles were too saucy; the sauce dripped off the noodles. The sauce also was too sweet. I like sweet pad Thai, but this crossed into the realm of too sweet. Ultra sweet could be your thing, though. Not mine.

There was a myriad of vegetables mixed throughout the noodles of the vegetable pad Thai: baby corn, carrots, broccoli florets, broccoli stems, button mushrooms, black mushrooms, red pepper, bok choy, green beans, and mung bean sprouts, not to mention two types of tofu. The variety of vegetables was a little overwhelming, but I didn’t mind too much. If you’re a purist and only like scallions and mung bean sprouts in your pad Thai, speak up.

Even though the pad Thai was enough for two sensible meals, I ordered the massaman curry to take home for dinner. A side salad does not come with your take out lunch orders.

Amazing! Light + camera = decent photo

Hey, look! All of those vegetables in my Pad Thai are in my massaman curry. I don’t like it when restaurants do this. It smacks of cheapness. It’s a one-size-fits-all solution, and means I can expect all of my dishes to be similar.

Usually only potatoes, onion, and peanuts, sometimes cashews, and your protein of choice accompany massaman curry. There were a few potatoes and peanuts in there, but only a few.

The sauce was not as thick as I like, but not thin enough to complain. It was a happy medium of thickness. The curry tasted good, but ever so slightly like a cross between massaman curry and penang curry. If the curry didn’t have the mélange of vegetables, I would have been pretty darn happy. But that’s not to say that I didn’t eat all of it.

In conclusion, I would not order the pad Thai at Soybean Grille again, but I would order the massaman curry. In reality, though, Soybean Grille is not conveniently located in my usual travels, so I don’t see myself returning. If I worked in one of the stores in Pike Creek Shopping Center, I would certainly order take out once a month, though.

Soybean Asian Grille
4702 Limestone Road, Wilmington, DE 19808
302-636-0800