Sabai Jai Market - Richmond

The menu was filled with so many intriguing options, but we eventually settled on a few dishes: - **Pla Muk Jetsai**: Grilled calamari stuffed with ground pork, onions, cilantro, and peanuts. This was my favorite, and I would return just for it. - **Jok Gai**: A Thai congee featuring ground chicken, a runny egg, quail egg, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, onions, and dried pork. This dish was a delightful experience, with each bite offering a mix of flavors. I was initially concerned about the texture, but it was more like porridge and not at all gelatinous. - **Guay Teaw Pet**: Roasted duck leg served in duck bone broth with rice noodles, Chinese broccoli, Thai celery, bean sprouts, cilantro, and garlic oil. The broth was rich and flavorful, reminiscent of five-spice, and the duck simply fell off the bone. Although we didn't try any desserts this time, I’m definitely looking forward to returning to explore more delicious dishes!

The food was tasty, but the shrimp in the dish was dried shrimp. The overall atmosphere and food were quite good. However, the fruit juice was a little too sweet due to the sugar syrup. There's a free parking lot right next to the restaurant, which is convenient. The soups were decent, but the Jab Chai soup didn’t contain vermicelli. It would also be helpful if the menu clearly indicated which dishes are served hot and which are cold. I was hoping for a hot dish and didn’t realize I needed to ask about the temperature, so I ended up with a cold one. It seems that many of the items from the "everything else" section of the menu are primarily cold dishes.

We ordered the Khanom Chin Nam Ya Gai, Kao Kook Kape, and Moo Su Wan. The Khanom Chin Nam Ya Gai is a creamy coconut curry with chilies and ground chicken, served with thin rice noodles, Chinese long beans, cabbage, and pickled mustard greens. Unfortunately, my friend and I were not fans of this dish, both in terms of appearance and flavor. To be honest, it looked unappetizing, and I didn't like the strong ginger taste (I'm not a fan of ginger). The texture of the ground chicken was off as well, and it was a bit too spicy for our liking. So we decided to try the Moo Su Wan instead. This dish was much better! It features sweet and spicy fried pork marinated in spices and honey, served with sticky rice. I found it interesting to have sticky rice instead of jasmine rice in an Asian restaurant, and it was quite good. While the pork was a little tough, I really enjoyed the flavor; the balance of savory and sweetness was excellent. It comes with a lime-like sauce that is quite spicy, but it complements the dish well, so I'll just have to drink a lot of water alongside it, I guess! We also sampled our friend's Kao Kook Kape, which is shrimp paste fried rice with pork belly, sweet sausage, fried tofu, scrambled egg, and onion. It was decent, but nothing extraordinary, as the ingredients were cooked plainly without any special sauces or flavors. The sweet sausage tasted like Chinese sausage.

This food is new and exciting to the western taste buds. Some familiar flavors (Chinese 5-spice etc) But its a great place to try something you?ve never had before, it?s almost guaranteed to be dank! Amazing atmosphere, decent service and wonderful comfort food.

We loved this place, it was a pleasant surprise, as we knew nothing about it and we decided to go through a belly feeling. The food was amazing, original mix of flavors and really well cooked, I really loved our plates. Drinks were also very good and different. Service was also really nice and attentive, I really enjoyed the mood of a small local place. I really recommend this place!