For the Love of...: …Juree's Thai Place Restaurant (Calgary)

Overall - 9/10
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Food - 8.5/10
Service - 9/10
Ambiance - 9/10

For the longest time we hesitated trying Juree's Thai Place, mostly because we were a bit put off by the old Burger King exterior. After discovering the delicious and authentic food, warm service and beautiful Thai interior decor we realized that we have been missing out on this amazing restaurant for the past three years its been open. Already we have been back twice in the last month to make up for lost time. 

They have a huge selection of appetizers and perhaps the best way to sample many of them is with the sharing platter. It includes spring rolls, satay skewers, stuffed and fried chicken wings and fried calamari. The dish is served with three unique dipping sauces that you can mix and match until you find you own personal favourite combination. The sauces included a chunky peanut sauce, a thicker sweet honey sauce and finally a thinner vinegar based dipping sauce. Our favourite had to be the stuffed chicken wings which were de-boned, stuffed with ground chicken, carrot and mung bean noodle threads. For good measure we also got the Thai dumplings filled with pork. They were soft, tender and bursting with pork flavour. 

The main dishes are meant to be shared amongst the table with rice. We went all in and chose a large order of coconut rice which can easily serve 4 hungry people. The curries we tried included the Matsuman beef curry and a Panang chicken curry. The Matsuman curry was very unique and contained thinly sliced beef, peanuts and potatoes. It was rich, sweet and had a great depth of flavour from the peanuts. The Panang curry was a bit lighter in curry flavour but still very satisfying. For each curry you can request mild, medium or hot to suit your tastes.

Matsuman Beef Curry

Panang Chicken Curry 

There were also a large variety of stir fried dishes and we chose the chicken and basil stir fry, cashew chicken and the Pad Thai. The basil chicken dish was light and permeated with the aroma of Thai basil. The cashew chicken was unique in that the chicken was lightly battered and deep fried then coated with a sweet chilli sauce. Finally the Pad Thai was well done with perfectly cooked noodles, fresh veggies, tofu and shrimp. Each of these dishes went great with the aromatic coconut rice as well.

Finally, no Thai meal is complete without mango-coconut sticky rice. The mango was fresh and sweet while the sticky rice was aromatic and fluffy. The dish was tied together with a slightly salty/savoury coconut sauce that balances the sweetness of the rice and mango.

Don't make the same mistake we did by judging this place on external appearances, give it a try and you'll be just as satisfied as we have been.