Review: Thai Thai Noodle Bar offers plenty of Thai and Japanese dishes

Thai Thai Noodle Bar has inside and outside dining areas at its location off Airport-Pulling Road.

Thai Thai Noodle Bar is a restaurant with an identity crisis.

Let me reassure you, though — it's not necessarily a bad thing for the North Naples restaurant. It seems the staff couldn't decide between serving Thai or Japanese food and said, "Let's just do both!"

There's a moody ambiance inside the restaurant that's created by low-hanging cone lamps over tables and moving green LED lights that flash above the bar. A large mural decorates the wall opposite the bar and kitchen area, but our party was frequently distracted by a projector screen playing cooking videos from Foodtravel.tv. Thai Thai Noodle Bar also has outdoor seating that looked worth taking advantage of, if the weather is nice enough.

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The overlap between the Thai and Japanese dishes makes for an overwhelming series of menus to flip through to find what you want, but with so many options to choose from, there’s likely something for everyone who steps in the restaurant, and the servers are direct and helpful if you have questions. 

The lunch sushi bento box at Thai Thai Noodle Bar includes sushi, tuna salad and fried foods.

Do you want Thai curry? They’ve got several. What about noodle soups? They’ve got plenty of those, too. Sushi? Definitely. And Thai and Japanese main dishes? You bet.

Our party began with appetizers, and we stuck with the Thai options. The two- or three-bite pork ($4.99) and shrimp ($5.99) dumplings are tasty, with a chewy outer layer and melt-in-your-mouth meat packed inside. If you can't choose between shrimp or pork for the dumplings, just get both. 

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The sampler appetizer ($14.99) also has something for everyone, with an array of spring rolls, deep-fried and bean-curd-wrapped pork and shrimp hoy jaws, Thai chicken wings, fried wontons and shrimp bikinis rolls served with a sweet pink plum sauce and decorated with a delicate purple flower.

The sweet and sour chicken lunch special at Thai Thai Noodle Bar comes with white rice, chicken and sautéed vegetables.

Some members of our group thought a few of the items may have been fried longer than they should have, which made for tougher meat inside the crispy outer layers. And one of the diners in our party was upset that the restaurant did not offer palate-cleansing, sinus-searing hot mustard to complement the spring rolls. 

Again, the battle between Thai and Japanese dishes provides plenty of entrees to choose from. I played it safe by ordering the sweet and sour chicken lunch special ($8.99) on the list of Thai dishes. It was the perfect portion size and came with a round mountain of sticky white rice and a mixture of chicken and sauteed bell peppers, carrots, cucumbers, mushrooms, onions, pineapple, scallions and tomato in a pool of orange sweet and sour sauce. 

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I could have eaten mountains of the rice, which was not too sticky and heavenly when mixed in with the sweet and sour sauce. The sauce makes the chicken, which was chewy, but would have been boring if not soaked in the sweet orange sauce. The sliced vegetables were sauteed enough to still have a bit of a crunch to them, but the tomatoes and pineapple pieces were overcooked and squishy. I left some on my plate.

The roasted pork wonton noodle Soup egg noodles has sliced roasted pork, wontons, Chinese kale and cabbage in homemade Thai noodle broth, topped with scallion, cilantro, fried garlic and white pepper powder.

One of my dining partners ordered the sushi bento box ($14.99), which was huge and would have made two meals for anyone who didn't want to stuff everything down.

She said the tuna salad in the box was at least a half cup of carefully cubed fresh, mild tuna layered over discs of cucumber and chunks of tomato. Six pieces of handcrafted sushi were generous with the whitefish and salmon fillet strips, and all were positioned on beautifully congealed bars of white rice. My dining partner said it was as close as she's come to eating art.

The bento box's fried foods — the J.B. tempura roll, crab salad-filled nuggets of sushi and a chicken strip dumpling — were another matter, according to my dining partner. She said the dumpling’s chicken strips had been pounded flat and were tough, and the batter-fried sushi was too mild and needed plenty of soy sauce.

The noodle soup menu was another several pages of Thai and Japanese options. Diners will find soba, udon and thin rice noodles on the menu, even a Thai version of chicken noodle soup and a Japanese version of ramen.

The fried banana ice cream dessert features fried bananas coated in a crispy oat crust and drizzled with honey and a crunchy topping.

Another member of my party ordered the chicken ramen ($14.99), No. 28 on the menu, which offers a choice of broth, either shoyu (soy sauce-flavored) or Shiro Miso (fermented bean paste), although our waitress didn’t ask her for either. It came to the table with the soy sauce variety, bobbing with Chinese broccoli, scallion, a halved soft-boiled egg, enoki mushroom, sliced chicken breast and slices of naruto, pink spirals of cured fish, not to be mistaken for the popular manga character.

My dining partner said it was altogether lackluster. The chicken and broth lacked flavor that even a dash more of soy sauce couldn’t solve. She said the creamier miso broth and flavorful pork would have been a much better choice on a second visit.

If you make it to Thai Thai Noodle Bar, the desserts are a must-have. Every one we tried was delightful. Although it wasn't my favorite, the adventurous will enjoy the mango and sweet coconut milk sticky rice patty ($6.99). The fried banana ice cream ($6.99) is a no-brainer, as are the fried and fluffy Thai donuts ($5.99) that come with a side of thick and creamy condensed milk sauce. Our party left Thai Thai Noodle Bar licking our fingers and talking nonstop about the desserts.

Thai Thai Noodle Bar’s Thai doughnuts are deep fried and served with a condensed milk sauce.

If you go

Where: 6438 Naples Blvd, #200, North Naples, along Airport-Pulling Road just north of Pine Ridge Road

When: Mondays to Thursdays, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fridays, Saturdays, 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m.; Sundays, Noon-10 p.m.

Prices: Appetizers, $5.99 to $14.99; soups, $4.99 to $25.99; salads, $4.99 to $15.99; entrees, $12.99 to $29.99; desserts, $3.99 to $7.99.

Extras: Lunch specials are served 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, with plenty of Thai and Japanese dishes to choose from. 

Grade: 3 forks

Something else: Tuesday nights from 6 to 10 p.m. the restaurant has live music from Alaska Mike Morgan, who plays acoustic classics.