I don't eat weird food. I never have.
While I was abroad, I stuck to a safe staple: margherita pizza.
It didn't matter if we were traveling to Paris or Prague, Florence or Amsterdam, if there was a pie with mozzarella, tomato and basil, it made it's way into my mouth.
Sarah, being younger but wiser, always ordered the boeuf bourguignon in Nice, fish and chips in London, gnocchi in Venice and schnitzel in Germany...all while I was wasting my time not culturing my pallet and certainly not broadening anyone's horizons...so much for stepping outside a girls' comfort zone.
Insert fret and regret here.
BUT, instead of torturing myself with the terrorizing trifecta coulda', shoulda' woulda', I decided to right my wrongs and get on a path.
A small footpath, mind you. But be sure, it's headed somewhere.
The first stop on my road to recovery was to try Indian food.
Um, what? Isn't that little intense, you ask. I was wary. Luckily, I work around a group of truly well traveled individuals and I have access to the best advice and first hand knowledge about where to get the right food in this town.
Enter Kevin, peer advisor to southeast Asia. As an alumni of our USAC program in Bangalore, India, he suggested the staff head out to the Indian food buffet at Cafe Culture, a small restaurant located within walking distance of our office.
Best.Idea.Ever.
However, this post is not about Indian food, it's about Thai food.
Second on my list of must haves was Thai food.
Not because I was particularly interested in yet another Asian invasion, but because it was Frank's birthday, and we decided that it was only appropriate to take him to to dinner at his favorite Thai place in town, Sophia's.
Generally, I shy away from places I've never been, as far as eating goes. This is especially true when they have an address that includes Nord Avenue after the street number.
As I pulled into what appeared to be the driveway - I use driveway loosely, it was more of an alley-my eyes fell on the two other cars in the parking lot - and by parking lot I clearly mean slightly bigger alley where cars park.
Here's what I was expecting to walk in to: a tiny, probably smelly, maybe musty, likely chintzy room with spicy, hostile noodles, chicken feet soup and perhaps a precious fish dish of some kind.
Sophia's was definitely not any of those things.
Walking in was like being transported back to my time in Europe, which is weird since it was a Thai place. The thing is, our time overseas was spent finding hidden gems down back alleys, in corridors and around shadowed corners to find the most authentic food, and of course, my pizza.
I had no idea what to get. Everything sounded like it would burn my mouth off, which wasn't as enticing as it sounds. I was worried that my lips would be on fire and my nose would be running just looking at the curry dishes. Cute.
I decided on the Pad Thai, which is s a dish of stir-fried rice noodles with eggs, fish sauce, tamarind juice, red chilli pepper, plus any combination of bean sprouts, shrimp, chicken, or tofu, garnished with crushed peanuts, corianderand lime, the juice of which can be added along with Thai condiments.
It was uh.maiz.ing. It came as a heaping pile of beige-brown noodles covered in red sauce with red peppers, crushed peanuts and a myriad of new flavors for my delicate taste buds.
Pad Thai had me at hello, in a proverbial sense.
It was a picture perfect blend of firey spices, peanut saltiness, saucy noodles and red-hot chili peppers, which all hit my tongue like a ton of bricks as soon as my fork passed my lips.
Not only was Sophia's a great experience to expand my palate pleasures, it was a lesson in friendship, and the importance of f(r)amily.
F(r)amily is a term I found deep in the pages of Cosmo. I coined it with my BFF's and made it a part of the words I use every day, to describe the friends I love and lean on whilst away at college.
The importance of a college network full of f(r)amily members has become more and more important as I have gotten older.
There comes a point in your life when you no longer list your mom as your emergency contact, and when you need to change your tire, you don't call your dad. You list your roommate who has been on a 16 hour train ride to Prague with you as your emergency contact, and you call your boyfriend to change your tire.
As we all sat there around the table, with our mouths on fire, eyes watering and food being passed around like a family at Thanksgiving, I realized how these great friends have truly become my family.
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