Upon first glance, Taste Asia looks very plain and boring in a nondescript store front facing Beltline. I was worried it would be another ho-hum fried rice and lemon chicken joint - boy I was surprised. It serves about equal parts Thai food, Chinese, and a sprinkling of Japanese ( such as cutlets or Udon). The people who run it are Thai, and the Lady especially exhibits that legendary Thai friendliness when you enter and try to decide to order. So far I have ordered the Larb, the yum nuea( beef salad), green and also the panang curry, and the basil fried rice. The basil fried rice was the weakest, as it was somewhat dry, and it didin't have a whole lot of the accompanying veggies I am used to such as tomato and cucumber slices. The other dishes are stellar and as usual, you can vary your level of heat per dish. The setting is not a traditional rest. in that, when you enter you are in the dining room, and you must go to the counter to order. You can also see them cooking your food. Then you go to your table, and they deliver when ready. Besides the food being fairly authentic, this place has two other things going for it. The prices are consistently 1 to 2 dollars cheaper than most other Thai places for the comparable dishes. The other point, and this is really neat, is that when you dine in, you get both free salad and soup. The soup and salad bar is always packed with several different types of dressing, and for thai salad fans, they have peanut dressing as well. They also always have 3 types of soup, usually a wonton soup, a chinese style hot and sour soup, and then , depending what day it is, they will either have Thai Tom-yum( the Thai hot and sour soup), or Tom Kha Gai, ( the thai coconut soup) . You can hit the soup / salad bar more than once if you like.
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