Aroy Thai Food Truck

I was craving Thai food, and was thrilled to find a Thai food truck, Aroy Thai, as a visiting vendor at Spark Social, a nearby food truck park.  Now, I do always say that San Francisco really doesn't have very good Thai food, at least compared to Sydney, but, I had hope for a food truck in particular, as those can sometimes be the best authentic experiences.

"Unique Asian flavors from the mind of Jonah — Our trailer is up and running!"

I didn't find much information online about Aray Thai, other than that the chef is Jonah, and he is not Thai.

Like many modern food trucks, they had a tablet to order on, but the dish I ordered, an interesting sounding cauliflower larb, was sold out ... but the tablet didn't know it, and let me order and pay.  I fell back on a far less exciting option, papaya salad, but in my haste to backup order, I missed the fact that it was vegetarian.  Nothing against vegetarian food, but, part of what makes good papaya salad is the fish sauce, the little fried shrimps, and the like.  It took a while for my order to be prepared, longer than any other food truck I've visited at Spark Social.

I didn't like my meal, and the overall experience did not leave me wanting to seek it back out to try another dish.

Papaya Salad.  $13.

"Freshly grated papaya, long beans, cherry tomatoes, lime, garlic, lettuce, roasted peanuts."

I asked if I could add on shrimp when I ordered, but, no, that was not an option.  I could add rice if I wanted, plain white rice, but nothing else.  I said I wanted it spicy, but, they didn't do spice levels.  Hmm, ok.

The papaya salad actually looked pretty good when I opened the box.  A sizable portion.  Lots of crushed peanuts on top.  But ... it just wasn't very good.  The base was standard shredded papaya and carrots, along with long beans, all reasonably crisp.  And then there were cherry tomatoes, the kind you get in the middle of winter, that you can tell have been refrigerated, and lost all their glory.  It was early September, when tomatoes were still local and fabulous, and these were quite sad.  So, average veggies except really poor tomatoes.

Papaya salad, like much Thai food, gets its appeal from the balance of spicy, sweet, sour, etc.  This ... just had no depth of flavor.  Once I realized it was entirely vegetarian I knew it wouldn't have any fishy funk, but, I still expected more ... something.  It just tasted sour.  There was no heat at all.

I've always thought even mediocre papaya salad was good enough, but, actually, this just wasn't.  I kept trying it, but really, truly didn't like it, and ended up just ditching it and getting something else.  I rarely throw out food, but this just was not tasty.

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