Zab Thai Restaurant - Everett

What a wonderful discovery! Caine and I, while buying some flea treatment for the kitties, asked the vet nurse where we could get some good Thai food and she recommended Zab's. Located in a dismal corner strip mall, this lavishly decorated restaurant is deceptively large.

Like many Thai restaurants, this place has a pretty large menu. The appetizer choices had us stumped - everything sounded so good. We had no choice but to order the appetizer sampler. This included a pair each of satay, spring rolls, crispy prawns, "money bags," and "crab delight." Every single thing on that plate was delicious. The spring rolls, which were vegetarian (and usually not my favorite), had a surprising amount of flavor, with none of the bitterness you often find in a spring roll. The satay was pretty standard, but quite good. The crispy prawns were actually wrapped in egg noodles, which made for an unusual presentation and good flavor. The money bags were "minced pork wrapped in spring roll pastry and lightly fried." The menu description does this creation no justice. They really kind of resemble money bags, and again, I was surprised at the amount of flavor. Crab delight turned out to be crab meat and cream cheese deep-fried won tons. Holy freakin' crap! Everything was delicious! The appetizers were served with a peanut plum sauce, tangy tamarind sauce, and pickled cucumbers. I was equally impressed by the presentation.

Let me start out by saying I love pad thai. Love it. I could eat it by the pound for just about every meal. Like salsa and mexican restaurants, you can usually judge a thai restaurant's quality by the pad thai. I'm pretty sure that this is the best pad thai I've ever had. Thai food is supposed to be a combination of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy flavors, and this pad thai seemed the perfect balance.

We can't pretend to be experts on thai, but I've eaten a good amount of yellow curry. Zab's Seafood Yellow Curry was not quite what I expected. The coconut milk flavor wasn't as prevalent, and over all it was "creamier" than I'm used to. This is in no way a bad thing, I simply didn't expect it. It was actually quite tasty, if not spicy enough. I fault myself on this. Few people believe me when I say it's almost impossible to make a food too spicy for me, but it is largely true; nor is yellow curry usually made spicy, or so I've been told.

The seafood was fairly good. Not stellar, but the scallops were fairly firm without being rubbery, and the mussels were neither too fishy nor too mushy. I think next time I'll get the mussaman curry.

The service was friendly and prompt, the presentation of all the plates was impeccable, if not overly imaginative. It seems that at every thai restaurant we really enjoy, the staff is extremely friendly and eager to please. Zab is no exception.

We'll definitely be returning, and I would recommend the experience to anyone.