Prompt service is a hallmark

On Sunday evening, I dashed to The Village Market for one of those meetings that could have easily been a phone call.

Much to my annoyance, the meeting took all of five minutes, after which I decided to head over to the food court to see if I could get a bite because you do not shower, put on make-up and nice jeans to only be out and about for five minutes: people have to be able to see you and appreciate just how good you look. If you so happen to bump into someone you don’t particularly like, even better.

I wandered through the food court looking for whichever eatery seemed interesting and that’s how I ended up at Thai Village. I was a little amused that they had pictures and names of some of their dishes on the walls. This is useful particularly for anyone trying out Thai food for the first time. I knew for sure that I wanted noodles and I also wanted something with coconut milk.

After a bit of deliberation, I settled on Tom Kha Gai (Sh850), a rich coconut soup with chicken cut into big chunks, packed with mushrooms, bell peppers and bursting with flavour from herbs and spices like galangal, kaffir lime leaves, coriander, chilli and more.

The soup managed to be sweet, spicy and sour all at the same time, in the way that any good Thai soup usually is. If you have a flu, forget the dawa because this soup cleared all my sinuses.

My favourite phrase henceforth when sick is going to be “I have a flu only Tom Kha can cure.”

It was meant to come with a side of noodles, but to my disappointment, these turned out to be regular spaghetti. I had at the very least expected some authentic rice noodles, and to reassure me I was told that when you order from the noodles section, you will get authentic noodles. The distinction made no sense to me.

I was served promptly in exactly seven minutes. The menu was fairly priced, the average cost being about Sh800.

I sat out on the court where several people were milling about. Someone even stopped by my table to ask if I knew where a specific shop was.

I didn't mind it because I also got to stare at passers-by and make up stories about where they could be headed. I don’t care much for football but there was a match going on and I could tell that Chelsea was playing, but only because the commentators kept screaming that into the microphone.

If you prefer privacy, steer clear of the Village Market food court, but dining alone, I didn’t mind that it felt like I was at a lively ruracio.