Senyai Thai Kitchen offers flavors of owner's homeland
When Tu Wade decided to open a restaurant in Shadyside, she was determined to make it a unique space.
“I didn't want it to look like every other Thai restaurant,” says Wade, who launched Senyai Thai Kitchen earlier this spring in a Victorian building she and her husband own on Ellsworth Avenue.
A native of central Thailand, Wade moved to Pittsburgh about 10 years ago and opened Ms. T's Beauty Lounge on the building's second floor.
“We wanted to do something with the first floor and I love to cook,” says Wade, of the impetus behind her eatery. She developed the menu to reflect favorite dishes of her homeland, including recipes provided by her mother, and hired Nu Khumkham, a Thai chef with loads of restaurant experience, to execute the menu.
One of Wade's lounge customers, Dana Cupkova of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Architecture, designed the interior, including a ceiling that has become the restaurant's visual piece-de-resistance. Comprised of a series of 275 vertical slats, it suggests the waves of a body of water. At night, its 64 bulbs are dimmed to create a starlit effect.
While Senyai means “big fat noodle” in Wade's native tongue, noodles are just part of a menu that features a variety of curried, grilled, and stir-fried dishes for vegans, vegetarians and carnivores, as well as folks who go gluten-free. Customers can choose the degree of spiciness they want.
Soups include Tom Kha — a coconut-based broth simmered with ginger-like galangal, kaffir lime leaves, mushrooms, tomatoes and cabbage. While appetizers include summer rolls made with tofu, mixed greens and vermicelli noodles wrapped in rice paper; marinated, grilled organic chicken served on a skewer with peanut sauce; and crispy enoki mushrooms with sweet chili sauce and peanuts.
Main courses range from eggplant-based green or red curry to pad medmamuang, an organic chicken and cashew nut stir-fry in roasted chili sauce. Seafood offerings include crab curry and pad pong karee made with jumbo shrimp, calamari, and jumbo lump crab meet with vegetables in yellow curry sauce.
Wade imports many of the ingredients that go into her foods, including dried butterfly pea flowers that she uses to brew a sapphire-colored tea popular in Thailand, and to give her lemonade a purple hue.
Deborah Weisberg is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.
Crab Curry
In Thailand, this dish is made with piper sarmentosum, a leafy vegetable not available in this area, so Wade substitutes kale. “I like the kale better,” says Wade, who serves the curry with white or brown rice. Serves two.
1 cup coconut milk
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablespoon yellow curry paste
¼ teaspoon table salt
½ teaspoon curry powder
½ teaspoon turmeric
3.5 ounces jumbo lump crab meat
5 ounces kale, torn into pieces
Chili pepper to taste
Heat oil in a medium-size pot over medium heat. Add curry paste, curry powder, turmeric, and salt, stirring until heated through, about one minute. Add coconut milk and bring to a boil. Add kale and cook until soft. Add crab meat and cook until warmed through. Add chili pepper, if desired. Serve with steamed white or brown rice.
