On Monday evening, keen to stretch out the weekend that little bit further, I suggested an impromptu date night. We had pre-dinner drinks and then went for a meal at Sabai Sabai.
One of the things I love about where we live is the range of restaurants and bars; different cuisines and flavours. We haven’t been to SabaI Sabai for ages, probably about 4 years, and I’m really not sure why?
The restaurant is fairly small, probably seats around 40 people, and it’s long and narrow with opulent decoration in purple and gold.
We chose a window seat to watch the world go by and ordered some drinks and prawn crackers (which were so spicy and tasty, with sweet chilli dipping sauce) while we perused the menu.
Deciding on food turned out to be something of a problem. There’s a lot of stuff on the menu and it all sounds really good. As usual I got “the fear” in case I didn’t choose wisely!
I decided to go for something I’ve been wanting to try for a while but haven’t been brave enough – softshell crab. Part of the reason I haven’t tried it is because the husband keeps weirding me out about it! But it sounded delish; covered in breadcrumbs and fried, served with thai salad and sweet chilli sauce.
Husband had the mixed platter which is a selection of different items – great for when you just can’t decide. It included golden bags, chicken satay, prawns tempura, sweet corn cakes and fish cakes.
Golden bags (Toong Tong) always makes me giggle childishly!
The crab was really good. Quite heavy on breadcrumbs meant that the first couple of bites didn’t yield much meat, but once past the claws there was loads!.
Delicate and tasty, perfectly paired with the chilli dipping sauce it was very filling – perhaps slightly too big for a starter (it hurts me to say that!)
For main course I had Ped Makam Jarn Ron, which was duck breast cooked with palm sugar and tamarind to create a really sticky gooey sauce, served on a sizzling platter of onions and topped with dried shallots.
I also had a side order of egg fried rice (to be honest we could have shared,one portion is quite large!)
Husband had Prawn Geng Massaman which was sweet with coconut milk and peanut sauce, full of big juicy prawns and chunks of potato.
The bill came to £75, but having worked it out £25 of that was drinks! (two glasses of wine for me, a beer and a double spirit and mixer for husband). So the food itself is very reasonable, with most mains being around the £10 mark.
As I said, I have no idea why we haven’t been for so long, but we won’t make the same mistake again! (if only because I want soft shell crab!)