Thai Food from Lamai's Kitchen

I've spoken before about Lamai, but I haven't written a real review. (Well, I waxed poetic about Lamai's Pad Thai a long time ago.) One of the reasons is that I keep forgetting to get great pictures. Sorry about that. I'm too busy eating.

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen is not the sort of place you go for the great atmosphere and the perfect service. But it's the sort of place that elicits passion in her customers. At her old place up in north Lansing, she often didn't have any employees, so the customers would wait on each other. One day, we even were given menus and water by the heath inspector! Everybody, I mean everybody, was eager to pitch in and keep Lamai in business.


It's just that Lamai is a great cook. And since the customers were always waiting eagerly to serve themselves, she opened her Michigan Avenue restaurant as a buffet.

Don't expect stereotypical Thai food here. It's authentic, but it's also one hundred percent Lamai. She's like a Thai grandmother, determined to feed you well, no matter what the ingredients. (And at times, if she's not too busy in the kitchen, she will come out and nag you about being too thin, or not trying the best stuff on the buffet.)



The first part of the buffet contains a selection of Thai salads, including her specialty Thai Fresh Eggrolls (pictured here). These are a little like the Vietnamese "spring roll", which is not fried, but wrapped in rice paper. Lamai's version, though, is filled with a lovely, light Thai salad, and are amazingly good with her special Fresh Eggroll Sauce. (Almost like a sour lemon syrup. It's yummy.)

She has a number of great salads, my favorite of which is made with browned Chinese Sausage and Cucumber. And then there is the ground turkey seasoned heavily with lime and herbs. Oh my. Or the Green Apple and Carmelized Onions with Cashews.

She usually has a rich and sour soup of some kind, either a spicy and sour Tom Yam, or a rich and spicy Tom Kha Gai. On Fridays, she has a seafood buffet, and seafood Tom Yam is really really really tasty. Watch out for the large chunks of lemon grass in any of her soups. Lemon grass tastes great, but it's woody.

On the buffet proper, she usually has a couple of kinds of noodles, including her famous Pad Thai. Some stir-fries (I recommend the Ginger Chicken - which is the dish with mushrooms, green peppers and peapods), and miscellaneous dishes that occur to her. She has taken to making her own version of the stuffed eggplant in garlic sauce that you see at dim sum places. Hers is heartier and except on friday, usually stuffed with pork rather than shrimp.

At the end of the buffet she usually has a couple of choices of rich and spicy Thai curries -- usually a red chicken curry with bamboo shoots, a Penang Beef which is stewed in sweet coconut milk and some third dish often with green beans.

She also has her own unique version of Crab Rangoon -- not a sweet and goey as you find other places. And without crab. She uses carrot and green onion, and it tastes even better than crab so don't complain.

On Thursdays, she replaces some of the dishes with Vegetarian versions, and on Fridays, she has a Seafood buffet that has the most amazing little rounds of fried shrimp that you will ever taste. (Have them with the fresh eggroll sauce - heavenly!)

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen is on Michigan Avenue at Fairview (right next to the Gone Wired Cafe). Yeah, it is sometimes hard to park around there. Suck it up. The weather is getting warmer. You can park on the neighborhood streets and walk a little. And she's now OPEN SUNDAYS. (Note, she closes between 3pm and 5pm every day.)

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen, 2033 E. Michigan Ave. (517) 267-3888.

Don't Forget Lamai Anniversary tonight!

I can't be there, so I'm reminding all of you: Lamai is having her anniversary bash tonight. According to the sign, she will be having her Thai Sukiyaki. Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen is at 2033 East Michigan Ave, at the corner of Fairview, several blocks west of Frandor and the highway.

Drive-by: Lamai Anniversary, Nov 19

Lamai will be celebrating her anniversary on November 19 this year. That's a monday. She usually has special dishes for that, and sometimes has her Thai Sukiyaki.

(Another review coming tonight -- Probably Midori, although I don't have the pictures I want. BTW, I 've added pictures to the Sultan's review.)

Lamai's Birthday -- Thai Sukiyaki

Lamai is having her birthday event on September 18th (that's this Tuesday!)

She will be serving Thai Sukiyaki again, and this time she will have more strainers. Here's a link to last year's reveiw, if you want to know more about Thai Sukiyaki. Another thing she's had more often lately is meat on sticky rice -- carmelized shreds of pork or beef, served over a bed of sweet sticky rice. This is a long time favorite of mine, and I'm so glad that she's serving it again.

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen, 2033 E. Michigan Avenue, Lansing. (517) 267-3888.

Lamai Birthday Event

Lamai's birthday is coming up! On Tuesday, September 26th, she will be having an extended buffet from 11am to 9pm -- which will include Thai Sukiyaki.


Thai Sukiyaki is an interesting dish -- supposedly one that came to a street vendor in a dream. It bears little resemblance to Japanese Sukiyaki other than it is a "self-cook" dish. Lamai puts out a large simmering pot of broth, a few strainers, and a whole bunch of raw ingredients, including seafoods, some very thinly sliced meats, vegetables and cellophane noodles. You fill your strainer, and dip it in the broth to cook, then dump it in your bowl and cover it with this pink Thai Suki sauce. It reminds me a little of Chinese sa tsa sauce -- five spice with a touch of salty dried shrimp flavor. (I myself like to have a little broth in the bowl too, although Lamai doesn't approve.) NOTE: the pink sauce is blazingly hot, use with care.

The main problem with the sukiyaki is that Lamai only has a couple of strainers, so there ends up quite a crowd waiting around the pot. Also, when she first fills the pot, it takes it a while to come up to heat. (Note: most of the ingredients she has laid out for cooking are quick cooking -- you don't need to boil it to death. Shrimp, for instance, is cooked when it is no longer translucent -- depending on the kind of shrimp, it doesn't always turn bright pink.)

But aside from the sukiyaki, there will be the pad thai noodles and fresh eggrolls, and salads and curries and stirfries. Sometimes she has spicey stir-fried dumplings, or little seafood custards.

Odds are, Tuesday will be a very tasty day.

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen, 2033 E. Michigan Avenue, Lansing. (517) 267-3888.

In Praise of Lamai's Pad Thai

I was exhausted and hungry when I drove home last night, when I realized I could drip by Lamai's and fill a container with pad thai and fresh eggrolls from the buffet. That perked me up no end.

Lamai is the best cook in town. But her style is home cooking -- she is free with shortcuts and substitutions, no need for fancy ingredients, only great taste. At Thai Food from Lamai's Kitchen, it's all about feeding you well.

I wil certainly wax eloquent about Lamai's cooking again and again here, but for now I'll just talk about her Pad Thai -- she takes the creamy, chewy rice noodles and stir fries them up with some egg and chicken or fried tofu and some vegetables. Then she throws in a ladle of the sauce--sweet and sharp with lemon and a touch salty with soy or fish sauce--and lets that carmelize onto noodles. Sprinkle on some peanuts, and oh, this is heaven.

The hot sauce is served on the side, so you can have it as hot or not as you want. And best you can have as much as you want -- she always has a buffet going (which is a good thing, because at Lamai's it's all about the food, and not about the service). You can get take out buffet by the pound.

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen is at 2033 East Michigan Ave, at the corner of Fairview on the east side. It's where Eddie's Chinese restaurant used to be -- and still has the round red awnings over the windows. Her hours are Monday through Saturday 11am-3pm and 5pm-9pm. Thursdays have special vegetarian dishes, and Friday has seafood. 267-3888.