Anybody who has ever taken a class around lunchtime in the Psychology Building, 420 (which should be a good portion of the student body seeing as I have had everything from actual Psych lectures to IHUM lectures to CS lectures in that building), knows that starting at 11:30, a line of seemingly intimidating length stretches out of the door of the building’s basement. This line is, of course, for the Jordan Hall Thai Café. If you were unaware that a secret restaurant was located in the basement of the Psych Building, then judging by the length of the line, you might think that something was being given away for free. While the food at the Thai Café is not in fact free, a $5.00 flat rate for every dish offered there is a pretty reasonable price. Additionally, the food is surprisingly good (and I say surprisingly only because food from a restaurant that has no visible kitchen, but rather appears out of a room in the Psych Building might seem suspect to some until they have tried it).

The beauty of the Thai Café lies in two things:

1)Its simplicity. Again, all dishes cost $5.00 (drinks are also available and range in price from $.75 to $1.25), and your biggest decision will be choosing between soup (shrimp, BBQ pork, BBQ chicken) and salad (peanut sauce, shrimp, BBQ pork, BBQ chicken, vegetarian — all are noodle based). There are also specials available (conveniently priced at $5.00); when I ate there this past Friday these included either a Chicken or Vegetarian Sauté (these were over rice instead of noodles).

2)Its efficiency. While I stated above that the line is so long that it can appear intimidating, those who have eaten at the Thai Café know that the line actually moves very quickly. Far more intimidating than the length of the line is actually the lady that operates the register at the front of it. The line moves quickly for a reason. Thai Lady (as some call her) has managed to earn herself the reputation as Stanford’s Soup Nazi equivalent. Much like there were rules to order soup from the Soup Nazi, there are rules at the Thai Café. You’re expected to have your money ready (cash only) and know what you want to order when you reach the front of the line. Here is how the interaction occurs: You say what you want, hand over the money, Thai Lady yells out your order (in her sweet but assertive sounding voice), and then a man brings the food out from what can only be described as a magical room. The room is magical because food is produced from it in about 5 seconds. No joke. Merely seconds after the last syllable of your order rolls off of Thai Lady’s tongue, the man will bring it out. It is a truly impressive operation.

I sampled two dishes at the Thai Café this past Friday — the Shrimp Noodle Salad and one of the specials, the Chicken Sauté. Of the two, I preferred the Shrimp Noodle Salad, though both were good. The salad was served at room temperature. Besides the noodles (which were egg noodles...a little thicker than your average linguini) and the shrimp (of which there were 5 pieces — I hate it when something is classified as a shrimp dish and then has 2 pieces of shrimp in it — so this was a positive), the salad contained peanuts and scallions — or green onions as some call them. It was served over lettuce and the sauce was “sweet and spicy”. As someone who doesn’t like things too spicy, I’d say that the degree of spiciness was very non-threatening.

The other dish I sampled was the Chicken Sauté. Again, while both dishes were good, I liked this one less for several reasons. The sauté was definitely considerably spicier (a little too much so for me, though in the spectrum of spiciness it probably wasn’t that terrible). Also, it just looked less appetizing. The shrimp noodle salad had the bright colors of the pink shrimp, the green onions and the red chilies from the sauce, whereas the sauté pretty much just looked brown (from the sauce and also just from the way cooked vegetables sometimes are). Perhaps I am the only strange person that judges food by some kind of a “prettiness factor”, but the sauté just looked decidedly less appetizing to me. Granted though, it tasted fine (as long as you are ok with spice). Portion sizes of all dishes are pretty generous. While I didn’t have a chance to sample any of the soups, I have heard good things about them.

I highly recommend trying the Jordan Hall Thai Café. I guarantee that it is better than the food you will get at any dining hall. While you cannot use your Cardinal-anythings to buy the food, its worth the 5 bucks. The cafe is opened from Monday to Friday between 11:30 and 2:00. If you’ve been wowed by its amazing efficiency enough times (and can contain your hunger for an extra 30 minutes or so), try going after 12:30 and you will often witness a much shorter line. You might even witness Thai Lady make small talk with students and crack a smile. It happened to me this past Friday.