THE road peters out into potholes and weeds grow up between the bricks of the patio. On the roof of a 1940s building is a model of an RAF jet facing towards the hangars in which the wartime planes were repaired, but part of its cockpit is missing and the paint is peeling from its wings.
In these inauspicious surroundings on the edge of Teesside Airport is the much talked about Thai Terminal 1 restaurant which in a few weeks’ time is to open in Darlington town centre in an expensively re-appointed bar in Crown Street.
At the airport, they’ve made the inside of the old RAF Middleton St George out-building as comfortable as possible, with intimate dark corners lit by touch-sensitive rechargeable lights.
As a group of six, we were seated at the large round central table, bathed in light flooding in from the glass roof, and were immediately greeted by two baskets of Thai prawn crackers (£3.50 each). They came with a sweet chilli dipping sauce and an interesting chilli fish oil paste with a good dose of heat.
The menu began with a selection of 25 starters, ranging from a deconstructed Thai Scotch egg (£6.95) to Bao Buns (just £4.75) to spring rolls (£5.50), nearly all in an Oriental style mixing sweet and savoury – I was very intrigued by Crispy Coconut Sticky Chicken (£6.95) but I couldn’t find anyone to share it with me.
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Instead we ordered two sharing dishes: a Bangkok Platter and a Dim Sum Tower (both £12.95). This was partly because our round table had a lazy Susan – a dinner table turntable, in Chinese – which our son Theo was desperate to put through its paces.
The bamboo tower featured layers each with three Dim Sums (steamed dumplings) on: chicken, prawn and pork. Dim Sums are light, ephemeral tastes, which are beefed up by soy sauce, and the prawns were the most successful.
The platter featured fishcakes, satay chicken skewers, vegetable spring rolls and, best of all, Zaap chicken legs. “Zaap” means “delicious, tasty or sassy” in Thai, and these legs had a kick: dry and crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, plus a great thump of sharp lime and hot chilli.
Each of the four items on the platter came with its own small bowl of advised dipping sauce which added further flavours to the dish. Theo found a sweet one that was so much to his liking that, when all the main ingredients were gone, he wiped out it with lettuce leaves.
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The main courses featured stir fries, curries and noodles dishes onto which you chose your accompaniment: vegetarian or tofu (£11.95), chicken (£13.95), beef or duck (£14.95), king prawn (£15). Included in that price was jasmine rice, and for a £2 upgrade you could have garlic noodles or coconut rice.
Petra, my wife, thoroughly enjoyed her tofu Gratiem Prik Thai, which was stir fry garlic and black pepper. It had plenty of vegetables – white cabbage, red and green peppers and orange carrots – in a sauce that was described as “really beautiful”. It was accompanied by coconut rice which added yet another flavour to the proceedings.
Theo and his sister, Genevieve, had the Pad Prew Waan, which was sweet and sour chicken in a sticky sauce. They opted for garlic noodles as their accompaniment, and Theo tore into his with a gusto that suggested he hadn’t been fed for weeks. These dishes were a big success.
I had chosen the Moo Wan (£13.95) from the speciality menu. It was deep fried belly pork in a sweet glaze which the menu modestly described as “sweet, sticky, sensational”.
I wouldn’t disagree. I loved it. The meat was beautifully cooked and tender, and the sauce was dark, rich and exotic, and beautifully balanced: there was the savouriness of the meat complimented by the slightly sweet sauce which never became sickly however much you ate.
And there was a lot of meat to get through, especially after those starters.
My pork came with a pot of “sticky rice”. I was advised to keep the lid on the pot and only take out a forkful of rice as I required it.
Sticky rice has been steamed so that it becomes glutinous, and it is extremely popular in northern Thailand. It was a bit gloopy for me, but it did work well in scooping up the sauce, which I thought was extremely zaap.
There were a couple of deserts – the ubiquitous banana fritter and a chocolate fudge cake – which we declined, and the coffee machine wasn’t working, so we paid our bill and made our way back out into the potholes and the weeds.
Service was friendly, if a little slow as it was busy; the old airfield building had a loud, echoey atmosphere, especially when each new arrival crunched into their crackers.
The vowels on the menu – there was a prawn starter called Goong Choop Pang Tod – suggested this was authentic Thai cuisine, but there were none of the elaborately carved carrots that I associate with Thai restaurants. It was, though, Oriental fusion food, fresh and tasty, mixing sweet and sour, fruit and meat, in a dynamic way a traditional English cook would never countenance.
Per head for two courses, soft drinks and prawn crackers came in at under £27 – they can’t possibly be that good value in the town centre, where the restaurant will be known as Taipan Asia and is due to open in early August.
Details
Thai Terminal 1
Aviation Way, Teesside Airport, Darlington DL2 1PD
Website: thaiterminal1.co.uk
Tel: 01325-335978
Ratings
Surroundings: 6
Service: 7
Food quality: 8
Value for money: 8
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