Tom Yum Goong: Puzzling but not unpleasant
We drove west from Denver to our Airbnb near the town of Bailey. Along the main road (past Conifer, before our turnoff at the Loaf n’ Jug), we were admiring the scenery and quaint mountain towns when we spotted an unexpected symbol of our love:
We’d had no inkling that we would find a Thai restaurant on the way to our remote cabin, let alone one with such a solid, hardworking name as Derrick. Because our cabin was so secluded (and utterly perfect), we spent most of our time there and didn’t come back into town, but we spoke of Derrick multiple times, joyful that Thai food had followed us even to the mountains. On the day we checked out, we decided we had to stop at Derrick Thai for at least a bowl of soup on our way back to Denver.
The restaurant was located along the highway between a humane society thrift store and the Cruz-In breakfast drive-thru. As you can see from the sign on the building, the establishment’s former name was Panda Garden. The rebrand was clearly a stroke of marketing genius—everybody wants to be friends with people named Derrick. Interesting note and conversation stopper: the only person I’ve known named Derrick was Asian.
Inside the decor reminded me of a Midwestern Chinese buffet crossed with a rustic mountain sports bar. A gold statue of Buddha smiled at us under heavy log beams. The place was empty except for us and what seemed like two grizzled elk hunters carefully scrutinizing home video of themselves at the bar TV, rewinding and reviewing, searching for reel highlights for some antiques appraisal and acquisition reality show they were filming.
We’d eaten a fairly big lunch to clean out the fridge in our cabin and therefore ordered one bowl of soup to share. The menu listed the soup as Tom Yum Goong. We didn’t know if that was the same thing as regular tom yum soup or not, but after looking it up I learned that “goong” is the Thai word for shrimp.
The soup wasn’t what I expected from a Thai soup. It was pretty greasy, and it featured red and green bell peppers and potatoes, which I don’t remember seeing in any of the other tom yum soups we’ve had. The spice level was satisfying, though I didn’t detect much lemongrass flavor. They may have compensated for lack of lemongrass with extra crushed chili peppers.
We did spot on the menu that they have drunken noodles (i.e. pad kee mao), and they of course had pad Thai. If we find ourselves in Pine, Colo. again, we’ve made plans to test out our full order.