Restaurant Review 1: Tara Thai

Restaurant: Tara Thai
Location: 9811 Washingtonian Blvd, Gaithersburg, Maryland
Rating: Three Hobbits out of Five

The Wanders Review: First, why Hobbits? They're cute and they have hairy feet. So what did I think of Tara Thai? I really would only give it two Hobbits, but it is such a busy place and I'm so insecure about my own convictions that popular opinion has influenced my score upward. If you like eating seafood inside a fish tank with all the fish and whales staring at you with a look in their eyes like, "Don't eat that little shrimp, he's my brother," then this is the place for you. Mother (that's my really hilarious old-fashioned nickname for my wife... well, I think it's hilarious) and I were seated at a table with drawings of sharks swimming over an undersea photo of a starfish. Little halogen lights were dressed up as jelly fish. The walls were covered with aqua green and blue murals of sea creatures converging on a sunken vessel like my bowling league at a buffet. I'm sure there were many dead bodies inside the ship that the fish were going to feed upon. Oh, the irony.

Mother said, "Look up. There is a scuba diver on the ceiling." I turned and hanging above me was a real scuba diver dangling from the rafters by fishing line (again, ironic. Perhaps the fish in the mural strung him up there). What gave me the chills, though, was that his dead eyes were wide open and staring through his scuba mask directly down at me! Creepy.

I really don't believe you need to eat the food at a restaurant before you review it, so I didn't bother to try an entree. Mother and I had wandered in for dessert. We ordered the mango sticky rice which was pretty good. I looked around at other people's plates and the food looked pretty good. The entrees looked pretty big. At the table across the way, a couple of French women were talking French while their two daughters ran all over the restaurant making noise. They seemed to like the food. They ate a lot of it. How do the French do that? They eat and eat and stay so skinny. So, I say, based on the way people seemed to be enjoying their meals, give Tara Thai a "trai" - Hee hee.

Man, I'm funny. Just ask Mother.