date night: thai edition

*for our previous HowAboutWe for Couples date, click here.

Best seats in the house at Ngam.

Ever since returning from our honeymoon, Mike and I have been on a very, very serious mission to find Thai food that isn't gloppy, overly sweet and -- in short -- Americanized. #sorryimnotsorry

Being a food snob is hard, but being a Thai food snob in Manhattan is especially hard. Once you have khao soi in Chiang Mai, it's kind of hard to go back to chicken skewers with sad peanut sauce (divaaaa). But! You guys! There is hope (apart from trekking out to Jackson Heights, which for the record, does have ridiculously authentic Thai). Ngam in the East Village may not be traditional Thai (there is a burger on the menu), but the flavors are as legit as what we got in Bangkok. Also, much closer than Queens.

Thanks to HowAboutWe, we snagged a tasting menu for two at the bar (which I actually kept a secret from Mike until we got there because I'm sneaky like that). I'm pretty sure the chefs got tired of me pointing at every vegetable they were sauteing, but to their credit, they tolerated me.

After sipping on Thai iced teas and fresh coconut water, we started with appetizers:

Pomelos! Squash fries!

I didn't know squash fries were a thing, but they are and I'm glad that they are. This was also the first time we'd had pomelo since getting back from our trip and it was just as tasty as I remembered it.

For mains, we split two:

This, my dears, is pad thai made with PAPAYA NOODLES. OK, you might be thinking, ew? But it's young papaya, meaning they're not sweet and just pliant enough that they work very well in a dish that normally calls for pasta. For someone who is trying to watch her carbs, this was kind of a revelation. You can also order this dish with zucchini noodles (!) and, of course, actual normal noodles as well.

We also opted for the lamb massaman "shephard's pie" which came enveloped with a Malaysian-style roti (please disregard earlier statement re: carbs). If you have never had this type of roti: it's not the same as Indian. Malaysian roti is like if Indian roti was all, "I'm spending the summer before high school getting really hot and you won't even recognize me on the first day of high school." It's buttery, flaky, tender ... SO GOOD.

Finally, as any proper date night should include, we ate melted chocolate with our hands.

I guess there were some strawberries too.

And, in case you needed more evidence of romance, check out this sign on the wall:

Aw.

If you want to create your own tasty date night, you can! Click here to use my referral link to get $50 off your first date through HowAboutWe. In case you're bad at math, that means you can have a feast at Ngam for $10 after your $50 voucher. I mean, no brainer.

Enjoy!