A Taste Of Leavenworth: Suprisingly Good Thai Restaurant

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On Memorial Day my husband and I traveled to Leavenworth, Kans. for his work and planned to have lunch there. We found a Thai restaurant and decided to check it out, it's called Baan Thai.

Walking in I liked it right away. The decorations were nice and not over done like some Thai places, and they weren't burning incense. Some places like to burn some strong incense and I think it should smell like the food at a restaurant, not incense. They also used white China with blue design and I thought that was cool.

I ordered the appetizer sampler that came with soft egg rolls and fried egg rolls, crab rangoon and chicken satay with a variety of sauces. My favorite sauce had little slices of cucumber and red onion and the sauce was sweet and rice vinegar-like, which complimented the cucumbers well. I liked to put them on the slightly curried chicken satay and eat them together. The crab rangoons were pretty tasty and different than what you would get at a Chinese restaurant - the filling was a little thinner and it had different spices than what I am used to.

The soft egg rolls are amazingly tasty and served cold. They aren't fried, but are made with a special rice wrap that is soft and almost sponge-like. Inside are ingredients like lettuce, cilantro, carrots, shrimp and rice noodles. I liked dipping these in the sweet and sour sauce.

For my entree I ordered the cashew chicken, which is served with jasmine rice. This is my favorite dish and Baan Thai truly impressed me with this dish. There were carrots, dry chilies (which are spicy as hell, by the way), cashews and onions and a lovely sauce that I liked to soak in my jasmine rice.  The vegetables were cooked thoroughly but not mushy and the sauce was sweet but not too with the spiciness of the dry chilies. I wouldn't recommend eating the dry chilies unless you want your mouth to be on fire for awhile.

Although it's taken me 29 years to go to Leavenworth, now I have a reason to return. Baan Thai gets my approval and I plan to return in the near future.  If you ever find yourself in that town, stop by and try some cashew chicken or pad thai - I didn't try the pad thai, but I bet it's good.