Local customers depend on a small, quaint restaurant on Main Street to always provide them with friendly service and tasty food for a reasonable price.
Monday through Saturday, customers dine in-house or grab takeout from Thai Blue Ginger, a 10-year staple of the Greenfield restaurant scene.
“The thing with restaurants is you can have 20 good meals and one bad meal, and then you turn that restaurant off for a while,” said Fred Gagnon, 39, of Shelburne, who has been a routine customer of Thai Blue Ginger since the restaurant opened in 2006. “It’s hard to keep that up.”
Yet, Thai Blue Ginger has no problem serving up delicious meals every time, Gagnon continued, including his personal favorites, the chicken yellow curry and the drunken noodle.
“It’s kind of one of those places you can always depend on,” he said. “It’s always the same.”
Anan Ninsri, general manager of Thai Blue Ginger, said the restaurant’s main goal is to maintain its quality.
“Sometimes people don’t like change, especially customers who always order the same thing,” Ninsri said.
For that reason, the menu has stayed largely the same throughout the restaurant’s 10-year history. Thai Blue Ginger offers traditional Thai cuisine through a variety of curries, noodles, pan-fried dishes, soup, salads, desserts and vegetarian options.
However, Ninsri said he and his staff of five employees also love to hear customer feedback on ways to improve.
“Service and food — it has to go together,” Ninsri said.
Ninsri explained that he and his parents, Kanok and Suthin Ninsri, lived in Thailand until 1995. They moved to America in hopes of making a better living and ensuring a better future.
The family settled in Boston. and Kanok Ninsri took up working in the restaurant business for several years.
“For every chef, their ultimate goal is to have their own place,” Anan Ninsri said. Eventually, Kanok Ninsri was able to open his own restaurant in Boston called Den’s Cafe, which he ran for two years.
Anan Ninsri said his father decided to move out of the big city to western Massachusetts, closing Den’s Cafe in 2005 and opening Thai Blue Ginger in January 2006. In addition to owning Thai Blue Ginger, Kanok and Suthin Ninsri own Wild Papaya Thai Cuisine in Kent, Ohio.
According to Anan Ninsri, cooking delicate Thai cuisine in America creates inherent challenges.
“If you’re in Thailand, everything is started from scratch,” he said. “But certain dishes require ingredients you can’t get here.”
For example, Ninsri said Thai hot basil is essential for certain stir-fry dishes and soups but cannot be found locally. To Ninsri, it is more important to have fresh ingredients whenever possible, even though canned ingredients would be more convenient.
“A lot of Thai food is Americanized,” Ninsri continued.
He explained that Thai restaurants in America often swap out traditional ingredients for ingredients that are not only easier to obtain locally but that local customers are more apt to recognize. The result is often food with milder levels of spiciness, sweeter flavor and more sauce, which are more likely to satisfy an American palate.
“Some dishes in Thailand are supposed to be dry, but here we have to make it saucy,” Ninsri said.
For customers who have never eaten Thai cuisine before, Ninsri said he and his staff are happy to assist customers in figuring out what they might enjoy.
Ninsri said some of the most popular items on the menu are the traditional Pad Thai and orange chicken.
“People are crazy about it,” Ninsri said of the Pad Thai.
Pad Thai is the most famous Thai noodle dish, made with wok-fried rice stick noodles, shrimp, chicken, egg, bean sprouts, scallions, crushed peanuts and exotic Thai spices.
The dish creates a delicious flavor combination of smooth, creamy noodles and crunchy peanuts, topped off with moist, tender chicken and crisp scallions. It is served at Thai Blue Ginger for $8.95 during lunch and $10.95 during dinner.
Thai Blue Ginger’s dishes are also served with a beverage topped with a rose — a rose carefully crafted from a straw wrapper and placed inside the tip of the straw.
Pad Thai is a favorite of Jennifer Toomey, 38, of Greenfield. Toomey and Gagnon dine together regularly at Thai Blue Ginger every few weeks. The two enjoy that Thai food is a healthy way to eat, and a unique alternative to the number of pizza places and chain restaurants in the area.
“It’s a great place to have in town,” Toomey said.
“I like this place so much, I don’t bother straying from it,” Gagnon said, explaining that he hasn’t eaten at any other Thai restaurant in Greenfield.
Walker Saville, 72, of Greenfield and Matt Campbell, 52, of Greenfield have been eating at Thai Blue Ginger for five years. Saville said it is just a short walk from their home, is reasonably priced and always has friendly staff. Plus, the two like to eat locally.
“Thai food is usually tasty but not heavy, and we like to support local businesses,” Saville said.
Saville brings her 19-year-old granddaughter Olivia Jones for takeout when she visits.
“Her big treat is to get takeout on Saturday night,” Saville said. “They’re really great with takeout. It seems to be a lot of their business.”
Ninsri said customers come down from Vermont and up from Northampton to eat at Thai Blue Ginger.
Gagnon added he enjoys the reasonable pricing and restaurant hours.
“It’s always open,” he said. “When all the other restaurants are closed, they’re open.”
Thai Blue Ginger is open from 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, and from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and is closed Sunday. Anan Ninsri said his mother Suthin Ninsri would like to see the restaurant open Sunday as well.
1 egg
Your choice of oil
Your choice of meat, seafood or tofu
1 oz fish sauce
1.5 oz vinegar
1.5 tbsp sugar
A handful of rice stick noodles
Bean sprouts to your liking
Scallions to your liking
Heat up your pan or wok over the stove and add oil.
Add one egg and scramble.
Add in your choice of meat, seafood or tofu. Stir-fry it until it is cooked about halfway.
Add in a handful of rice stick noodles, as well as a bit of water to help soften the noodles. Stir-fry the noodles until they are soft.
Add in the fish sauce, sugar and vinegar. Stir-fry the dish until the ingredients are well-mixed and beginning to turn brown.
Lastly, add in the scallions, bean sprouts and crushed peanuts. More sugar, fish sauce and vinegar can also be added to your liking.
Serve hot. Makes one serving.