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This week I took a terrified scouser to the recently opened Thai Ends in Ashton, a non-halal restaurant with a licence to serve alcohol.
He’s the polar opposite to my 78-year-old mother Yvonne, who is my usual drag-along on food reviews. Yvonne approaches food like a basking shark; everything goes in, and if there’s something particularly inedible in the mix it might come back out.
My companion this evening is more like the titular canine in the film Dances With Wolves. He approaches every restaurant’s offering of food with absolute distrust in case it contains anything “moody” (a vegetable).
The Scouser’s con as a sidekick is that he is very restricted in what he will eat, but the pro is that I get to see how a restaurant deals with off-menu requests and intolerances. Yvonne’s pro is that she will eat absolutely anything which is, sometimes alarmingly, also her con.
We were given a warm welcome by someone who, I presume, is the manager/co-owner; one half of the couple who made The Fry Inn takeaway at Lostock Hall such a howling success. I’m guessing that the other half was in the kitchen, blissfully unaware that he was about to be asked to send out a plate full of everything that Thai food shouldn’t be.
We were on a time constraint so I ordered a mixed starter for one to arrive at the same time as our mains. It consisted of a spring roll, a piece of satay chicken and one of pork – both of which were slightly dry but tasty – a spiced, crispy ball of fragile rice noodles that was an ASMR joy to crunch up, and a sweetcorn fritter in an incredibly light batter. They were served with a spicy dip and a clear, sweet/sour dipping sauce, which all together made an interesting starter that wasn’t over-facing.
I ordered chicken Panang curry (£12.95) with jasmine rice (£4), which reminded me why I always used to order it from The Fry Inn. Generally, Thai green curry has my heart, so I’ll only cheat on it with the sweet and salty Panang from this particular head chef.
The sauce is crammed with so much flavour that neglecting to temper it with some rice could see you punted into interdimensional travel with a trailing scream, possibly leaving your knickers behind (not sure why) and nobody wants that on a school night.
If you’re usually Team Green Curry, give Thai End’s Panang a try. But don’t just get one from a supermarket’s chiller aisle and then blame me because it’s not as good as I’d promised, you adorable bunch of loose cannons.
The chef’s evening took a dark turn when he had to start preparing The Scouser’s tea. The creator of Fourth Dimensional Panang was asked to cook something without vegetables, heat, or too much flavour… the equivalent of asking Michelangelo to draw something nice and handing him a beige crayon.
What came out of the kitchen was exactly what had been requested. It was a pile of noodles and chicken, savoury without any heat, and it went down a storm. I had a try and it was surprisingly tasty considering what had been left out, which is again testament to the skill of the chef as well as an example of the effort that the staff and manager will make to ensure that their customers are happy.
It wasn’t the most photogenic plate of food, but there was no way of beautifying it without ignoring our request. It cost £13.95 which could be deemed expensive for just chicken and noodles, but when the generous amount of chicken breast is considered, along with the big old spanner we threw in the works by requesting something totally off-menu with heavy restrictions, it cost the restaurant team extra time, imagination and skill, which was worth every penny.
The mixed starter, two mains, one side of rice and two pints of lager came to £46.80. The Scouser could have done with more noodles with his chicken, but I took what I couldn’t eat of my food home, which was more than enough for another meal.
I hope that my photo of the chicken noodles doesn’t put anyone off from going to Thai Ends, because it’s an example of an absolute gem of a restaurant doing their utmost to cater for everyone. Sensitivities to the taste, texture, smell and look of certain foods can make it almost impossible for some neurodivergent people to enjoy a meal in a restaurant, so it’s wonderful to find a chef who is willing to make such adjustments.
Have you ever been pananged into another dimension without your knickers? Let us know what else went down in the comments.
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