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 Thai China Palace Does Chinese Well, And Thai Magnificently. By Rebecca Cook FRIENDS HAVE COMPLAINED I tend to focus a tad too often on Asian food. I freely admit to an affinity for Oriental cuisines, but it's a mistake to assume that just because food comes from the "east" that it is, by and large, the same.
Remarkably, Thai China serves both sides of its menu with style and panache. At least to the casual observer, one cuisine does not seem to suffer at the expense of the other. Most diners will be familiar with Thai China's Chinese offerings: plenty of lo mein, chop suey, moo goo gai pan and moo shu. What might surprise some patrons, however, is the size of the serving portions, which, in most cases, stretches beyond ample and well into unwieldy. An order of the vegetable egg foo yung ($4.95) literally took our breath away. A platter-sized fried pancake of egg and other vegetables came topped with an umber soy gravy absolutely riddled with stir-fried vegetables, including broccoli, carrots and onion. At turns tender-soft and crunchy or sweet and soy-salty, Thai China's egg foo yung was a masterful (albeit hefty) stroke. The Chinese egg rolls ($2) were also good: familiar golden-fried envelopes with shredded cabbage, carrot and bean threads, accompanyed by tangy sweet-and-sour sauce. But it's the Thai food that astounds here--it's good enough to go against any served elsewhere in this city.
The cornerstone of Thai cooking is the philosophy of perfectly blending the Five Flavors: salty, sweet, sour, bitter and--the most characteristic of many Thai dishes--hot. It's the delicate and harmonious balance of tastes that distinguishes authentically outstanding Thai food from feeble imitations. Thai food offers a vibrant gustatory palette to awaken your taste buds and alerts the rest of your senses that something extraordinary is afoot. Thai China Palace abounds in examples of the Five Flavor philosophy, with a menu so extensive it will take several visits just to scope out the possibilities. Salads in Thai cuisine encompass a much broader interpretation than that of American cooking. Almost any ingredient, served hot or cold, can find its way into a Thai salad. If you're looking for something to really intrigue your palate, this is an excellent place to start. We found the soomtum ($5.50), shredded cabbage and carrots mixed with ground peanuts, lime juice, red chiles, finely chopped tomato and garlic, especially delicious, with tastes that seemed to change subtly with each bite. Another popular option is the larb neau ($4.50), ground beef or chicken mixed with mint leaves, green onion, cilantro, lime and garlic. Thai China Palace's version is served warm along with a lettuce wedge, the leaves of which you can use like a tortilla to encase the meat mixture. An order of the fresh spring rolls ($2.95) would also suffice as a salad substitute. They're made with an uncooked rice wrapper, shredded lettuce with a little onion and carrot. These ingredients don't produce much excitement by themselves, but when dipped in the accompanying peanut sauce, they're quite tasty. Everyone has preferred dishes by which to measure one restaurant against another. With Thai food, I always sample one of the curry dishes and an order of pad thai, probably the most popular and familiar item on any Thai menu. At Thai China Palace, I ordered the Bangkok delight ($7.95), a red curry dish of chicken and shrimp, pineapple, red and green bell pepper, onion and carrots gently simmered in coconut milk. Neither too spicy, pungent, nor cloying, this elegant dish balanced even more completely when spooned over a luscious bed of white rice. The pad thai ($5.95), a popular sweet-and-sour noodle dish consisting of stir-fried rice noodles, choice of chicken, beef or pork, as well as egg, green onion and bean sprouts, was enjoyable, but not outstanding--perhaps because its sweetness threatened to overcome the other flavors, thereby disturbing that essential balance.
Although it may seem incidental, I have to mention that the staff
at Thai China Palace are some of the friendliest folks I've run
into. By the time you leave the place you have the sense you've
dined among friends, and that's a nice feeling in this ever-expanding
metropolis.
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Tipped off by a reader's thoughtful email, I discovered the Thai
China Palace, with two Tucson locations, both of which offer a
dazzling selection of dishes from two of 
Borrowing from the culinary traditions of 