A Dining Adventure: 40 Restaurants in 40 Weeks: Wok-In Restaurant

This week, our adventure was a little different from previous weeks. We decided to venture to Wok-In Restaurant on Montreal Street, and like many of our destinations thus far, it is in the "heart of it all" - downtown and close to many hot-spots. The difference with this restaurant, though, isn't location - it's size. Wok-In is a pretty small space. It does have some seating, but since we had a big group, we opted to "grab and go". Samer is our resident "Wok-In" expert, so he took care of picking up our order, and then we all headed to Todd's place to enjoy.

Now, some of you may be thinking "But why take-out? How will you tell us about what it looks like inside, or what your service experience was like?". Never fear, friends. Never fear. I took care of that, too... Or... I should say that Samer did... When he went to get the food, I asked him to take some pictures and make a mental note of service, too - so a big thank you to Samer for all of his efforts this week, and thanks to Todd for hosting, too!

Our lovely table :)

Wok-In Restaurant offers "fine Cambodian, Vietnamese and Thai food" for its patrons. While I couldn't find a website, I did find a number of reviews online (everyone always has an opinion!) and all of the reviews were very positive. So positive, in fact, that I wasn't surprised to find out that Wok-In is typically quite busy. Seriously. REALLY busy. Wok-In is so popular that in order to guarantee we could eat our large order at the time we wanted it, we all explored the menu online and Samer called it in at noon for pick up at 6pm. It certainly isn't rare for people to have to wait a little while for food here - but in this case, it's actually a good thing. Not only does it speak volumes to how popular the restaurant is, but it also goes to prove that the staff at Wok-In take their time to create fresh, delicious dishes for every customer. Nothing is "pre-made-and-ready-to-fry-or-cook" here. Everything is started when it's ordered (unless, of course, you order at noon for dinner... in which case, they are just really good at time-management!).

Let's get right to the nitty-gritty, shall we?

Here's what we ordered:

Spring rolls for all.

Todd, Samer, Jordan and Kendra chose 4 dishes to share:

A) "The Samer Special": Samer goes to Wok-In enough that they have a dish named after him. It's not listed on the menu, but you can ask for it by name (impressive!). It's a #1 and #16 combined... Asian style chicken with red curry, basil, coconut and rice + Curry shrimp with coconut milk and rice.

B) #2 - Chicken, pineapple, tomato, coriander, red and green chilli pepper and rice

C) #11 - Thai style shrimp, chicken, vegetables, chilli paste, "holy" basil leaves and rice

D) #18, ordered spicy - Pad Thai, chicken, shrimp, bean sprout, peanut and green onions

Tonia: #18 as well, ordered with regular heat.

Carrie: #11, ordered mild.

First of all, I have to talk about how huge the spring rolls were. I have had a lot of spring rolls in my life. It's kinda my thing. If I'm eating Asian food and there are spring rolls on the menu, you'd better believe there will be some coming my way... and I have never - and I mean NEVER - seen rolls this big. Certainly, a typical order has 2 or 3 rolls at other restaurants... but this isn't your average restaurant. Not only are the spring rolls really big, but they are a great price. At $1.75 each, you could order 2 or 3 for the price of one order at other restaurants and be WAY more stuffed. If that's your thing. I certainly wouldn't say no. In fact, all of this talk of the spring rolls and I just might have to have a spring roll dinner some night. No need to order anything else. The trick with these rolls (as reported from our good friend, Samer), is to eat them while they are fresh and hot. Now, this may seem like an obvious point, but apparently, the longer you wait, the more prone they are to getting limp. I'd say that's just a life lesson.

The rest of the dishes were absolutely deliciously fragrant and gorgeous. And then, we got to eat... and let me say, the satisfaction just kept coming.

I finally get it. I now understand why Samer insisted that we have Wok-In on the list. I understand why Samer goes to Wok-In more than any other restaurant in town, and why he ordered meals in bulk to freeze when he moved to BC. And all of that leads me to understand why they have a meal called The Samer Special... Call it an obsession, perhaps, but it's not such a bad idea. In no time at all, we were filling our faces with the yummy dishes with quotes like "you start to crave the flavour and eventually it becomes a medical condition" floating around. Samer said "In California, I went to 16 places and only found 1 place that was somewhat close"... must have been heart-breaking for him! Other quotes from the evening included "It's my favourite #1 in the city", "I can smell the cilantro in this and I'm stuffed up! That's really good!!", and, my personal favourite - compliments of Kendra: "You know it's hot when my nose is damp. Not wet or snotty. Damp."

With that, here are our ratings:

Todd: 5 forks. Todd enjoyed all 4 of the entrees. Todd said that to date, Wok-In is is favourite Asian experience.

Tonia: 4.82 forks. For Tonia, the food was good. Tasty, flavourful and hefty portions. Tonia said that she would recommend that people go, but that all in all, it wasn't her favourite, so she just couldn't give it a 5. She did wonder if perhaps it is because she doesn't have "a meal" there yet. Only time will tell!

Jordan: 5 forks. Jordan said three things that summed up his experience. Really fresh. Good flavour. Right amount of spice.

Kendra: 5 forks. Delicious. Kendra said "same as what Jordan said", and "it made me sweaty." Take from that what you will.

Samer: 5 forks. Samer was relieved that the pressure was off this week since he's been talking up the Wok-In for so long. Of course, he was just as impressed as he has always been.

Carrie: 4 forks. Pretty darn delicious. Like Tonia, it isn't my favourite Asian restaurant to date, but I was still pretty impressed. Mostly, I think I was wishing there had been a greater variety of veggies - on this night, I ate a lot of celery.

Overall score: 4.8 forks.

Certainly a well-deserved score. And after eating so much food, it was really nice to already be at Todd's and so close to a couch... Which, created inspiration for our next stop - Tom's Place. If you haven't been there, the description I give in the next blog will make this point make much more sense. In the meantime, I will leave you guessing and on the edge of your seat. Or couch.