Mae Gaew Restaurant, Knutsford

...tracked down the almost unpronounceable Mae Gaew in Knutsford.

Knutsford is a good choice for dinner if you haven't thought to book ahead. King Street is the heart of the town and has more restaurants than you can shake a stick at. We figured that even if the Thai was closed, we'd find more than enough alternative options. There was a time when you really would struggle to get a restaurant on a Thursday night in Knutsford but you can ...
...adjacent parking spaces directly on King St, just down from the restaurant.

With Thai restaurants, I generally expect to spend £25 to £30 per head so I was really surprised to see that they were offering two 'early diner' specials – a two course menu at £9.95 and three courses at £12.95. Both were available between 7pm on Monday to Thursday and we – lucky bunnies – had turned up at 6.30pm on a Thursday. It would have been rude not ... more

My friend Alison works for the company which I left almost exactly a year ago. In the time since I joined my new company we've tried and failed to get together many times, only clocking up two nights out so we were well overdue for a catch up. Since she works close to Manchester airport and I was flying in at a respectable time for a change, I headed straight round to see her when I landed. We'd had an exchange of text messages over the previous couple of days to see if we could agree a place to have dinner. She won last time and we had eaten in a really awful Turkish restaurant in Wilmslow, so this time I got the right to push my choice on her. I fancied Thai – but then I generally do – and she tracked down the almost unpronounceable Mae Gaew in Knutsford.

Knutsford is a good choice for dinner if you haven't thought to book ahead. King Street is the heart of the town and has more restaurants than you can shake a stick at. We figured that even if the Thai was closed, we'd find more than enough alternative options. There was a time when you really would struggle to get a restaurant on a Thursday night in Knutsford but you can tell the recession is kicking in because we found two adjacent parking spaces directly on King St, just down from the restaurant.

With Thai restaurants, I generally expect to spend £25 to £30 per head so I was really surprised to see that they were offering two 'early diner' specials – a two course menu at £9.95 and three courses at £12.95. Both were available between 7pm on Monday to Thursday and we – lucky bunnies – had turned up at 6.30pm on a Thursday. It would have been rude not to take advantage of such an offer.

The restaurant is located in a tiny little black and white building with lots of heavy beams and traditional looking features. Inside there's a bit of a clash of both periods and cultures with this very traditional old-England shell housing very modern furniture and lots of Thai crafty-stuff. Does it work? I'd have to say "not entirely" – the black wooden tables and white high-backed leather chairs fit quite nicely with the traditional black and white but the slightly tacky Thai touches are a bit cheesy. Mind you, I've criticised other local oriental restaurants for having no oriental touches at all so I guess I should stop being so inconsistent.

Only a couple of tables were occupied when we arrived so we were told we could choose any of the two person tables that were free. I'd say that in total there were not more than a dozen tables, probably split half and half between tables for two and tables for four. If you were taking a larger party, I think even early in the evening you'd be best to ring ahead and book. We chose a small corner table near the door where we could sit at right angles – I always think that's a more friendly and less confrontational set-up than face to face, not that I was planning on a fight or anything.

The waiter brought us the menus and I asked – I'm getting bolder these days – if the early diner menus were available. I've found a lot of restaurants don't draw your attention to such offers if you don't ask. The waiter found the relevant pages in the menu for us and then left us to think about drinks. Fancying white wine, but knowing that we both had to drive home, we checked the drinks list for wine by the glass and were faced with a Chardonnay or something enigmatically referred to simply as 'fruity white'. We both went for the former.

The difference between the two and three course meals is not – as you might suspect – a pudding. The three course includes soup which is generally my favourite part of a Thai meal. The choice of main courses was also more interesting with the more expensive deal. Three courses included a mixed appetiser, a soup and finally a main course and a choice of rice. I was a bit wary of the mixed starters because I don't eat meat (just fish) and it's not always easy to identify what's in some of these dishes. So I explained to the waiter and he promised to make sure it was OK. For soup we both chose what was described as 'hot and sour', me with tofu and Alison with chicken and then for main courses I ordered prawns with holy basil and she took a sweet and sour fish dish. We both ordered plain rice and got down to the serious business of the evening – catching up on the company gossip.

Service throughout the evening was quite slow but not unpleasantly so. If we'd been there for fueling up rather than having a good chin-wag then the pace would have been annoying but since eating was secondary to talking, the pace was perfect. I did notice though that the diners at one table left before their third course because they ran out of time and needed to be somewhere else.

The starters arrived on a massive square plate and had easily enough food for us to have given up and left when we'd finished. In response to my request to not give me meat, some items appeared just once so it was easy for me to spot what I couldn't eat. Alison had a chicken skewer and big porky won-ton type thing which I missed out on and I suspect the little mound of crispy tofu was added for my benefit. We each got a fish cake (my favourite), a spring roll, the crisp tofu and a mound of tempura vegetables to share. The starters were served with a selection of dips – a chilli dip, a sate and third that I'm not too sure about.

Eventually the waiter realised that we weren't going to eat any more and almost reluctantly took the dish away. The soup when it arrived was a fantastic bonus – I'd read 'hot and sour' and expected a Chinese-style slightly sticky vinegary soup. What we got was classic Tom Yum soup which is far and away my favourite soup in the world. The balance of spices, heat and sourness was absolutely perfect and I hardly needed the little chunks of tofu in the base. Unlike many Tom Yum soups I had the impression that they'd pre-filtered some of the more troublesome contents that can make a good bowl of Tom Yum into a cross between soup and a lucky dip.

Before the soup arrived we'd asked to get some glasses of water. These still hadn't arrived by the time the soup had been finished and cleared so we reminded the waiter again and he brought them. There was quite a long delay before the main courses and we'd drink all our water by the time they finally came. My dish of prawns with holy basil had a variety of green vegetables such as green peppers and green beans but I was half way through before realising that the basil, if present, was being a bit 'shy'. Alison and I shared both our dishes and her sweet and sour fish was much better than I'd expected with a sauce that was lighter and less sticky than I'd feared but was a bit heavy on the pineapple chunks. Despite having already eaten a mountain of starters and a bowl of soup, and having a large pile of boiled rice each (I normally share a portion of rice) we polished off every last scrap of the food.

After we'd finished we ordered coffee and tea which weren't great but somehow we squeezed a space for the After Eight mints. The bill when it arrived was about £35 for the two of us - £3.50 each for the wine, £12.95 for the three course deal and another £1.50 or so for the coffee. We each left a £20 note to cover a tip and walked away feeling that we'd had a very good value night out. We were in the restaurant for nearly two and half hours and never felt that anyone was trying to hurry us along to get our table back. I'd certainly consider going again though it would normally be a bit of a challenge for me to get to Knutsford early enough to take advantage of the early diner deal.

Tel/Fax: 01565 631621
Address: 48 King St, Knutsford, Cheshire WA16 6DT

 

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