LIFE

Dining Review: Tup Tim Thai stands out with strong flavors

Less-popular menu items at South Commercial Thai restaruant may be rarely ordered but often a delight.

Brooke Jackson-Glidden
Statesman Journal
  • Tup Tim Thai Cuisine: Three out of four stars
  • Where: 3860 Commercial St. SE
Vichuda Stine (center) owns Tup Tim Thai Cuisine in South Salem, where she serves Thai favorites and unique, hard-to-find items.

Tup Tim Thai Cuisine on South Commercial is a neighborhood mainstay for South Salem diners. It has all the expected American Thai favorites: curries of every stoplight shade, fried noodles and rice (owner Vichuda Stine said Pad Thai is one of the most popular menu items). But hidden in the depths of the restaurant's tome of a menu, you can find some serious, mouthwatering, hard-to-forget "funk."

Thai food, like most Southeast Asian cuisines, requires that strong, funky, salty flavor that comes from preserved fish (fermented, dried, salted — you name it). This flavor goes beyond umami and enters another realm: pungent, almost off-putting but, when used correctly as Tup Tim does, it's irresistible.

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Fish sauce, the residual liquid from pressed anchovies, is available at the table in a jar with floating chilies.

The old favorites

Tup Tim Thai is in a strip mall, but it doesn't feel like it is.  Framed pictures of traditional Thai food and Buddhas line the walls, and Thai country music plays on the speakers. Sip on a sweet, turmeric-orange Thai iced tea or perhaps an imported Singha beer.

Stine's expansive curry selection includes classics (green, yellow, red, mussaman) and some innovative twists (Jungle Curry made without coconut milk, pumpkin, pineapple). Green Curry is a little too cloying here. With less sugar and more time to reduce, the aromatics in the curry base would blossom naturally and the curry would thicken. Still, other curries (like mussaman or pumpkin) would appease the spice anxious with mild sweetness.

Of the restaurant's several fried noodle dishes, I tried two: Pad Si-Ew and Drunken Noodles (pad kee mow) are both stir-fried with wide noodles, though Drunken Noodles is spicier with chili, garlic and basil.  Pad Si-Ew, which translates to "stir-fried in dark soy sauce," is comforting, the kind of thing you take home and eat at 2 a.m. in front of the TV (or is that just me?).

"Black soy sauce in Thailand, it's a very important flavor," Stine said about the sticky and sweet sauce.

Stine tries to avoid fish sauce, noting that, for many diners, the flavor is a little too strong. To me, fish sauce dishes stand out with layers of flavor. To call the condiment adventurous bums me out: Fish sauce does the same thing anchovies do for Caesar salad or shrimp heads do for gumbo.

But Stine solves the problem by always leaving a jar of fish sauce on the table, filled with floating sliced chilies, next to the hot sauce.

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Namtok Beef combines lime juice, aromatics, fish sauce and tender sliced beef for a powerfully flavorful entree.

The hidden gems

Namtok Beef, also called "waterfall beef" in Thailand, is similar to a crying tiger salad you might spot on other Thai menus. Cilantro, fish sauce and sliced onion and shallot are shockingly pungent and, with the addition of housemade rice powder, probably only a good choice for sodium enthusiasts like myself. A Thai iced tea, the sweet stir fry Pad Prik or a sweeter curry help balance flavors out.

The same ingredients in Namtok Beef also are found in the larb, a ground pork, chicken or beef salad, though the tang of citrus creates a more balanced dish.

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Tup Tim Thai Cuisine chefs stir-fry bell peppers, green beans and kaffir lime leaf with red curry chili paste for Prik Khing.

The must-orders

Start with one of the restaurant's many soups, which consistently deliver outstanding flavor that's only possible with lemongrass, galangal and time. I've already raved about the restaurant's Tom Kha, possibly my favorite soup in the state of Oregon. Tom Kha blankets the potential heat of chili with coconut milk, which avoids sweetening the soup too much by befriending kaffir lime leaf and galangal (similar to ginger).

Tom Yum follows a similar formula as Tom Kha, but without the coconut milk; the soup is spicy and sweet with sugar and chili. Good tom yum marries tang (the result of lemongrass, kaffir lime leaf, lime juice and galangal) with funky umami (aromatics paired with stock, often made using boiled shrimp heads — here Stine just uses housemade chicken stock).

Prik Khing stir fry, served with your option of proteins as well as bell peppers, green beans and kaffir lime leaf, also is a great choice. A housemade prik paste with chili, lime leaf and red curry is set apart by the use of chili oil, which grounds the dish in earthy heat.

Email Brooke Jackson-Glidden brookejg@statesmanjournal.com or call 503-428-3528. Follow her on Twitter @jacksonglidden, or like her Facebook page www.facebook.com/BrookeJackson-Glidden.

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The decor at Tup Tim Thai Cuisine features Buddhas and other Thai knickknacks.

If You Go

Tup Tim Thai Cuisine: Three out of four stars

Where: 3860 Commercial St. SE

When: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4 to 9 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, noon to 3 p.m. and 4 to 9 p.m. Saturdays, and 4 to 9 p.m. Sundays

What to order: Tom Yum or Tom Kha, Prik Khing, Namtok Beef, Larb

What you'll spend: $6 to $15, with lunch specials from $8.50

Get in touch: 503-967-6078

(Four stars: exceptional; three stars: good; two stars: fair; one star: poor)