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Just Thai (Changshou Lu)

Thai | Putuo

Just Thai (Changshou Lu)

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Just Thai (Changshou Lu)

  • 155 Changshou Lu,
    near Shanxi Bei Lu

    Putuo District

    长寿路155号,
    近陕西北路

    10 mins from Changshou Rd
    Chinese Name: 就是泰
    3212 5587
    Daily, 11am-10pm

    Editor’s Description

    Last updated: Jun 11, 2019

    This venue has yet to be experienced by our editorial staff of discerning nitpickers and sardonic critics. Editor's Description forthcoming.

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    • I don't like hot pot. There, I said it. I think it's a pain. I think it's messy and takes too long and delivers very poor value on the food. I think most of the flavor comes from the dipping sauces and there's literally no point at all to ordering cheap vs. expensive cuts of meat, since it's all going to taste exactly the same once it comes out of the pot. 

      That being said...

      I like Thai food, a lot. It's probably my single favorite world cuisine, and that's saying something, considering how much I love Chinese food. 

      Soooo...

      When I noticed Just Thai was making the Chinese foodies go gaga online, I knew I had to give it a try. 

      The main location is over near Da Shi Jie station, just south of People's Square. It has over 24,000 reviews on Da Zhong Dian Ping, with an average score of 9.1/10. It also features 2-3 hour waits. 

      Nope...not doing it. 

      Fortunately, there are a few other locations around town, because franchising is reasonable and good for trendy brands. With just shy of 6000 reviews, the Changshou Rd. location isn't unpopular by any measure, but online intelligence indicated that I was unlikely to experience much of a wait, so we made our way over, and to our delight, were seated immediately. 

      The Soup: 

      The main choice for your soup uses a Thai twist on the classic Chinese yuan yang guo 鸳鸯锅 (i.e. the two-in-one soup base featuring spicy and clear soups). This one had tom yum goong broth on one side and tom kha gai broth on the other side. So basically a savory/spicy/sour option and a rich/sweet/coconut option. The spicy side was made with seafood, while the coconut side was made with chicken. Before cooking any meat, we tried both sides of the soup. The tom kha gai was really tasty - very rich and sweet with deep complexity of flavor, while the tom yum goong side was more of a disappointment. The flavors didn't seem well integrated - just lemongrass, chili, lime juice. Tom kha gai soup: 8/10. Tom yum goong soup: 4/10. 

      To cook in this broth, we ordered a mixed meat platter, additional fatty beef, some fish roe tofu cakes and spinach along with a Thai milk tea. 

      The meat - The mixed platter was a big plate of raw, seasoned meat, split among chicken, beef and pork. All three were marinated, which seemed to matter not at all, because when they came out of the soup, they just tasted like the soup (this is my major complaint about hot pot in general). Fortunately, the soup was pretty good - or at least half of it was anyway. We especially enjoyed treating it directly like a soup and spooning up the broth and the meat together with a spoon, which is something you probably wouldn't normally do with oil-based Chinese hot pot. The side order of fatty beef that had no marinade ended up tasting exactly like the marinated meat. 

      The not-meat - The spinach was totally unremarkable, except for that it took 3x longer to serve than anything else (??). The fish-rose tofu bags were interesting but I only wanted to try one of them, when the minimum order was 4. They had a slightly-fishy taste but were mostly tofu-y in texture, kind of like those Korean fish cakes you can get in some restaurants. 

      The milk tea - was really good. Some people would probably say it's too sweet, but I like sweet. 

      The dipping sauces - were mostly forgettable. There were three in all: a sweet and sour, a spicy green pepper puree, and a slightly more complex sour/spicy/chili + lemongrass mixture that was definitely the best of the three. 

      Overall: I give the coconut broth an 8/10, the tom yum broth a 4/10 and the experience of eating hot pot a 1/10, because I still don't like eating hot pot. If I went back, I would focus on the coconut broth and treat the whole thing like a big pot of soup into which we can throw everything and then ladle out bowls of soup for each person and ignore the hot pot model of eating. If we can do it like this, I give the whole restaurant a 4/5. I wouldn't wait in line for it, but I might have a craving someday in the future...or maybe bring an out-of-town guest for a creative culinary diversion. I could see it being a good date spot too. 

      Other stuff: Service was disorganized and very busy but nothing egregious...this place is hopping. All ordering happens via QR Code on the table. Price was pretty standard for hot pot, 246 CNY for two people. 

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