Curry night at Mai Thai Sushi

19 April 2025

 

MAI THAI SUSHI

12 Mill Street, Cape Town

 

We live within easy walking distance of Mai Thai Sushi, The Woodlands Eatery and Vintage India and kinda rotate visits depending on what we want to eat. Tonight, Von-Mari craved Mai Thai’s Massaman curry because she had a taste of mine at our previous meal here and wanted the whole deal.

 

At 19h00 the restaurant was almost deserted, with just one other table occupied but within 30 minutes patrons started arriving and by 20h00 it was very busy. I’ve always wondered how Mai Thai has survived but, if they can draw full houses like this on a regular basis, I suppose it isn’t a mystery. The food is good and reasonably priced and obviously draws a supportive clientele.

 

The décor and look is quite “cheap and cheerful” low budgie; the owners haven’t done much capital expenditure since the halcyon days of Chef Pon’s Asian Kitchen and it shows though I suppose quality of food and service trumps looks.

 

Von-Mari drank white wine and I had one can of Tsingtao beer, as one does when eating Asian.

We shared three prawn spring rolls (R65) to start. The spring rolls are uniformly excellent with a substantive amount of flavourful filling and are light, crisp and not oily at all, served with a lovely sweet chilli dipping sauce.  One could make a meal of just a combination of different types of spring roll.

 

Von-Mari obvs ordered the chicken Massaman curry (R139)

and instead of the traditional multicoloured Thai curries, I chose the “Indonesian Bali” chicken curry (R139) with an unspecified “ground sauce” where the signature flavours are coconut, coriander and lime leaves.  In contrast, the Massaman curry contains peanuts, coconut, aromatic spices and potatoes and is supposed to be only mildly spicy. 

 

To my mind, if you’re fond of a korma you should like a Massman curry.

 

Both curies were accompanied by generous bowls of sticky rice.

 

Von-Mari’s curry journey has been one where she avoided any spice curry (traumatised by a childhood where her father specialised in the fiercest, and borderline inedible,  of Durban curries) to eating korma almost exclusively to murg makhani (butter chicken) to rogan josh, and some others where I tone down the chilli levels.  In this context the Massman should’ve been ideal for her.

 

However, roughly halfway through her meal, Von-Mari pushed her bowl of curry away and said that it’s become cumulatively too sweet for her palate. It’s not truly sugary sweet but I suppose the coconut milk based sauce can be too much for a palate that isn’t used to that flavour profile.  I had the last of the bowl and it was certainly as satisfyingly flavourful as I recall my previous dish.

 

My curry was richly flavourful and boasted of  a fiesty chilli heat that caused the back of my head to sweat and made me reach for the sparking water on the table once my beer had run out. In the ordinary course I eschew the sparkling water Von-Mari usually orders. 

The heat wasn’t unbearable though and the lingering heat at the back of my throat eventually simply felt pleasantly warm rather than intrusive.

We had coffee and dessert at home.  Asian desserts have little appeal for us.

 

The bill, inclusive of our drinks, came to R454,00 before tip.

 

If one goes early,  Mai Thai Sushi is still the kind of eatery where you can walk in and easily find a good table. The food is excellent, the portions are generous and the service is cheerful and efficient. The get up is pretty basic and there isn’t much cosy atmosphere, so I wouldn’t recommend it for a first date night but for a good, solid, satisfactory Asian meal it’s perfect.