As you walk up the stairs into the restaurant, there are numerous pictures of the staff with various celebrities who have been there, including Hugh Grant, Ian Wright and Tim Henman, so they are obviously used to serving some pretty discerning clientele! How cool that we might have sat in the very same chair as Hugh Grant....!
The menu is much more expansive than is shown on their website which meant all my pre meal preparation was pretty useless as I had so many more choices to narrow down! Luckily for starter my mum was willing to share with me, so we got sweetcorn fritters and prawn toast (I quite wanted to try the tuna basket, but I was kind and let my mum make the final decision!). Christopher went for the pork and crab meat dim sum (I was very proud at the adventurous choice!) and my dad chose "Haggis Bombs" which aren't on the website menu but are basically haggis in filo pastry with sweet chilli sauce!
The food was really beautifully presented, and tasted just as good as it looked. The prawn toast was crunchy with lots of king prawn and a good sesame flavour, and the sweetcorn fritters were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and had a lovely sweet taste, as well as bursts of coriander every now and again. The sweet chilli sauce had a good kick. Christopher's dim sum was also great - soft meaty little parcels bursting with flavour, complemented well by the soy sauce dip. I think my favourite starter could have actually been my dad's though; the haggis was meaty, spicy and smokey, and it was just such an interesting and different starter, but executed well so it still contained Thai flavours and didn't seem out of place!
I asked the waitress on her opinion for my main as I couldn't decide between beef panang and rice, or a "Fruits of the Sea" seafood curry - she didn't even have to think and immediately said the seafood, so that made it very easy! I also had a side of sticky rice. My dad had chicken in oyster sauce with steamed rice, my mum had sizzling chicken and steamed rice and Christopher had thai red curry with duck, and royal fried rice which was pretty much egg fried rice but with crab meat in it as well!
My "Fruits of the Sea" seafood curry had scallops, mussels, prawns and squid in it, and the sauce was quite similar to a thai red, but had the addition of egg which changed the texture somewhat. I thought it was absolutely amazing. It was chock-a-block with seafood, and everything was so meaty and delicious. My favouite was either the scallops or the king prawns as I love the texture of both, but I have to say they had also cooked the squid really well as it wasn't rubbery at all. The sauce was fairly spicy and rich but not overpowering (although I think they got the portion size bang on as more might have been too much), and I liked the way the egg made the sauce a bit thicker and added more flavour. With the occasional crunch of vegetables and the sticky rice soaking up all the sauce I basically had the perfect curry. I absolutely loved it.
Christopher's duck thai red had a lovely creamy sauce but was much spicier than mine - he must have drunk nearly the whole jug of water! Despite that he really enjoyed it and said the duck was very tasty. The rice was also great - lots of egg and flaked crab!
My mum's sizzling chicken was so cool - they set it alight just before serving it, and so it arrived on a sizzling black platter! It had a honey based sauce (I think!) and the chicken was juicy, with lots of crunchy onions and some coriander (our favourite!).
My dad's is the only one I don't remember trying, but it looked colourful and attractive and he really enjoyed it, which makes the meal an all round success!
Nahm Jim definitely isn't cheap, but the presentation and the taste of the food show that it is an extremely high quality place, so it's one that I would recommend for a treat - it would be the perfect post graduation meal (hint hint Christopher!) and is certainly somewhere that anyone living in St Andrews should try at least once!
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