Let me first begin by saying that Greg's Kitchen is certainly a worthy endeavor. This is the restaurant for young chefs in training and this place provides them with a venue to gain practical experience, usually to the enjoyment of those who come to eat. they are located at the McKay Events Center where the Culinary Arts students are hard at work all week to prepare meals for their customers on Friday nights. Make sure to reserve a table and come early.Okay, on with the review. The first appetizer was a triangular dish with a lovely sauce, really quite a perfect balance between presentation and flavor. The appetizers included, Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce
(very good), Lettuce Wraps with Spicy Chicken Salad (okay, not so flavorful) and a Fried Spring Rolls with Sweet Chile Dipping Sauce (good). The Salad and soups came next. The Green Papaya Salad with Chopped Peanuts missed the mark with a lack of clarity in taste and consistency in the cuts made for a weak dish. The soups, Chicken and Coconut Milk Soup and Shrimp Soup with Lemon Grass were very good and perhaps by the book, but the intense
flavors I generally associate with the coconut milk soup was lacking. The Thai Cucumber Salad was overtly sweet. For the entrees, the Green Curry Chicken with Thai Eggplant was good but the eggplant was incongruent and a 'bit weird'. The Pad Thai Rice Noodles with Shrimp and Chicken was good but not outstanding and the 'Pla Duk Tod Krob Phat' Fried Catfish in Garlic Sauce was quite nice, albeit a tad overcooked. But again, the sauces started out with a good base but then lacked follow through of flavor to give it some depth and the intensity usually experienced in Thai cooking. I this, most likely, can be chalked up to young culinary students following the recipes but lacking the integral understanding and importance of the underlying culinary statement behind each dish that craves to exert itself through the richness of exotic ingredients. I hope that these young cooks begin to understand that cooking is an art and requires them to constantly taste their food and trust their intuitive sense of taste. I got the feeling that they were 'flying blind' and didn't taste the food while they were preparing it. Often robotic impulses can overshadow appropriate culinary creativity within the bounds of a set recipe.
In fact these young culinary would be chefs, were more caught up in the presentation than the taste. This was especially true with the Mango and rice dessert. It was overcooked, starchy and the mangos were green (not sweet) and tasteless. The other desserts were much better. The problem was generally too much form and too little attention the the function; rich flavorful taste! I give the experience three out of five chopsticks.
