It's hard to find anything bad to say about Home's, a stylishly decorated Thai restaurant located directly across from Breeze Center Mall ( "The service is great, the food is great and the portions are good," said Sohail Roshan, a regular customer. Home's quality is further underlined by the fact that it joined an elite group of Thai restaurants last month when it won the Thai Select certificate, a program the Thai government initiated two years ago to promote the country's cuisine abroad. Home's was one of three Taiwanese restaurants to earn this distinction and the only one that is locally owned. "We mix traditional Thai cuisine with modern elements," said owner and manager David Huang (黃正發), who was born in Myanmar and lived in Chiangmai, northern Thailand as a teenager. He chose the name Home's to evoke the image of a place where customers can feel comfortable. PHOTO COURTESY OF HOME'S THAI CUISINE Huang recommends the Thai sauce raw shrimp, the Thai grilled lamb steak and the royal Thai curry prawns. "The Thai sauce raw shrimp really represents Thai cuisine," he said. It consists of eight pealed sashimi shrimp topped with fresh-squeezed lemon juice, diced garlic, fish sauce and grated hot peppers. Each of these elements can be tasted on the first bite, as they burst onto the palette in a cascade of flavors. The lamb steak is marinated for two days before being cut into medallions and served on the bone with a house special red sauce. The flavor is more subtle and the meat is well marbled and of good quality. The curry prawns are Home's house specialty. Served on a bed of red bell peppers with a side of sliced bread, the sauce is made from a mixture of Indian and Thai curries. Chopped peanuts give a contrasting texture to the mildly spicy curry, which has the consistency of melted butter. Wash these down with a glass of Singha beer or Thai tea, a pinkish-orange milk tea with a hint of coffee. The tea goes down smooth and doesn't leave a bitter or sugary aftertaste. With the notable exception of the bread served with the curry prawns, which was a bit sweet, everything else sampled for this review tasted authentic and delicious, which might be because every chef at Home's was hired directly from Thailand.
Thai cuisine found a home in Taipei.
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