In the light of day, the Thai House bears a grand castle-like resemblance, a stark contrast to its grey and white neighbors in the mile-long stretch of Convoy's mall landscape. Few Thai restaurants in Kearny Mesa offer the quality of taste to match the price that the Thai House offers during lunch on the weekdays, so Thai House is a natural choice for me when I’m in Kearny Mesa for lunch and hungry for Thai cuisine. Thai House offers tasty appetizers, savory soups, and delicious entrees for well below $10 per dish. Their sit-down service is efficient and professional, and if there is a wait, the wait is short. The staff on hand are patient and will fill and refill your glass of water as you take your time in looking over the menu. The food during lunch is served within 10 minutes of placing the order, which is an amazing feat in a corporation-entrenched community of Kearny Mesa.

Even better than dining in the restaurant is placing a quick phone order for their take-out service, and today, I did just that. Scrolling through my phone list, I nimbly dialed Thai House's phone number and placed my order...one order of pad thai with chicken and one order of spicy noodles with chicken. My food was ready and waiting for me in a neatly stapled brown bag at the register after the 20 minutes I was on the road en route to the restaurant.

I smelled the noodle dishes all the way home in the car, while I carried it into the apartment, and finally, as I forked the noodles onto my outstretched plate. Today must have been a busy lunch for the Thai House kitchen because I learned the hard way that there is a direct association between preparation time and taste: common sense should have warned me that the less time there is for preparation, the less appetizing the food. I have been a devout Thai House pad thai with chicken follower for five years, and it's strange that the one time I am ready to write on all the glories of this wonderful dish, it is a flop. The seasoning in the dish itself lacked its usual depth of flavor, the noodles were softer than their al dente predecessors, the tofu was tough with an odd taste, the pickled vegetables were not a crispy texture, and there was almost no egg pieces littered throughout the dish. However, on the plus side, the thick slices of chicken were sweet and tender. Perhaps if I squeezed lemon juice from the lemon wedge so generously provided with the pad thai, over the noodles, would this help to enhance the flavor? There was some flavor enhancement, but the lemon was not fresh and very bitter, in effect, spoiling the dish altogether. I left it to eat another day, hoping that the left-overs would be tasty tonight or tomorrow. It was time to move onto the spicy noodles.

The smell emanating from the spicy noodles with chicken was intoxicating and invoked salivation. All it took was a single flat, white noodle to melt all the disappointments of the pad thai away. The spicy noodle dish was delicious. And SPICY! For a mild spiciness level, it was mouth-burning, eyes watering, skin tingling HOT. Yum! And again, the chicken was tender and juicy and the egg pieces and basil leaves produced an aromatic palate pleaser.