Currying Favor

by Jenn Carbin

Forget that cumin-heavy, lackluster yellow dust labeled "curry" sitting on your supermarket shelf, the kind that turned your mom off it. Curry is a vibrant spice mixture made from a selection or a combination, of 20 or so herbs or seeds (coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, cloves, chili and ginger among them), and by extension a richly sauced dish of vegetables, meat, fish or a combination that’s been flavored with such a mixture.

It's both a staple food and sophisticated cuisine in India, where there are vast regional variations, and it's perhaps one of the world's most traveled dishes. According to Jeff Yang and Terry Hong, who discuss the dish's history in Eastern Standard Time (Mariner Books), curry started in India five millennia ago, landing in other Asian ports at least a thousand years ago. At some point it became an integral part of Thai cuisine, which features red, green, yellow, orange and "Massaman" curries in a coconut-milk base.

Fast forwarding through time and space, curry is part of an interesting mix-and-match concept at Vientiane Café, a Lao/Thai one-room restaurant in West Philly. Here, at lunchtime, you get to choose a red, green or yellow curry soup and match it with the protein of your choice: tofu, chicken, beef, shrimp or salmon ($5.95-$8.95). The dinner menu makes the same offer, with a dollar added to the respective prices. There's also a three-course lunch special that includes as an entree choice all but the shrimp and salmon selections. All the curry soups contain a sweet, rich, coconut base and include crisp vegetables.

It helps to know that, generally speaking, Thai green curry, made with fresh green chilies, is the spiciest Thai curry -- though at Vientiane, as at some other local Thai places, it's toned down. The green curry soup with shrimp included over a half-dozen fresh-tasting medium shrimp and a relatively light broth with a serious zing.

Red curry, usually made with dried red chilies as well as fresh, provides a sort of smooth, lingering heat. The red curry soup at Vientiane did just that, and with its hunk of tasty grilled salmon and accompanying side of rice, was a lot to eat.

The yellow curry soup with tofu included potatoes and chewy rectangles of the tofu. The yellow seemed more complex than the more elegant red and green soups, going beyond the typical cumin and turmeric.

Vientiane Café, 4728 Baltimore Ave., 215-726-1095.

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