Phipps Feeding Fiasco

The experience

I’ve been wanting to try this restaurant that was suggested to me by a colleague for quite some time and decided tonight was the night to do it!  After all, we are coming up on our last month of childsplate!  I had to wait for Benji to awaken from his nap before rounding up the rest of the Phipps, who were upstairs playing video games.  We got ready pretty quickly and got on the road.  We ended up at Flavor (not to be confused with the Indian restaurant Flavors) in Dallas.

We were seated right away and looked over the menu.  The kids had brought some toys with them and busied themselves with that.  We ordered and appetizer with our drinks that we thought the kids would enjoy.  When she returned with the drinks, we ordered soup, which confused Mina, who said, “Hey!  What about my sushi!”  Ogre stil wasn’t sure what he was going to order so we asked her to come back.

We finally ordered dinner and got our soup.  Benji was being freakish, or perhaps territorial, handing me his cheese stick that Papa had broken in half for him, then picking up the last one on the plate (we thought he wanted one that wasn’t broken), but no, he asked Papa to break that one, too.  Sheesh.

The kids sushi came next, but they only brought one set up, so, of course, the kids started saying, “Hey!  Where’s my chopsticks?” and “I want soy sauce, too!”  We had the waitress bring us a second set up while Ogre cut up their sashimi into bite sized pieces.

In the meantime, Ogre and my entrees arrived.

Benji REALLY wanted to use his chopsticks and Ogre had to help him a couple of times, but for the most part, he was able to pick up his sushi on his own with the chopsticks.  It’s really quite amazing to watch!

Mina, for whatever reason, still required some prodding to finish her sashimi and then her cheese stick from earlier.  All I had to say, though, was that if she wanted to eat some of my dinner, that would be the other option, and she quickly finished what she had on her plate.

The kids started to get a little rowdy with their chopsticks, so we did have to tell them to quiet down a few time and tell them to stop drumming.

We ordered dessert as we’d been eyeing the Banana Rum Flambe from the minute we saw it on the menu.  We all shared that and the kids (and we) loved it!!  We left with very content bellies!

The food

Mainly traditional Thai entrees with some Asian fusion and some sushi/sushi rolls.

We ordered the Cheese Sticks.  These are long straw shaped tubes of deep fried rice paper wrapped around crab rangoon type filling (cream cheese and crab).  Mina said that it tasted like a cheesecake.  I don’t know that I agree with that, but it did taste very good!

Ogre and I each ordered soup.  He ordered the won ton soup and I ordered the Tom Kha with Shrimp.  Both were definitely above average.  Ogre’s in particular was a much better than average Won Ton soup as it had large won tons and bok choy.  My Tom Kha was on the spicy side, but still tasted great with a nice mix of sweet, sour, salty and spice!

I ordered the Yellow Curry with chicken.  It was pretty good.  The sauce was a little thicker than I like and the dish was a little light on the meat, but the potatoes were very gender and it had good flavor.  As a point of reference, I like the yellow curry at Bangkok City much better.

Ogre ordered the Drunken Noodles and thought this dish was really good. Nice and spicy.  His only complaint was that, it, too was a little light on the meat.

The kids ordered tuna sashimi and a side of noodles.  I suppose the sashimi was good as the kids devoured it.  It was not the dark red that I like to see, but that did not seem to bother the Phipps children.  The noodles were served plain and only Benji ate those.  Would’ve been nice if they’d been served with broth or something.

Dessert was excellent.  We ordered the Banana Rum Flambe.  It’s not like a Bananas Foster that they serve up tableside, but it was quite tasty.  It’s sliced banana covered in a caramel and chocolate sauce and served with ice cream.  They also serve them with Thai waffles, but no one at the table was a fan of those!

The service

Service was average.  They were spread a little thin, but our drinks stayed refilled.  Some gaps in service here and there, but nothing too horrible.  Food came out at a pretty good tempo.

The kids

No kids menu or kids activities, so not the most kid friendly restaurant, but the servers thought our kids were cute and we didn’t feel too uncomfortable there even when the kids tried to use chopsticks as drumsticks.

I think we’ll be back here and there to eat dinner.  It’s a little far for us to drive, so perhaps when we’re in the area.

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