Welcome home

In the immortal words of Dorothy, “There's no place like home.” And even if it meant moving back from Monrovia's charming main street, Myrtle Avenue, to a rather dismal block of Colorado Boulevard, the call of Pasadena must have been strong to the locals who ran Sweet Garlic for three years before moving back to open Daisy Mint a couple of months ago.

Until 2005, Pasadena was hands-down the best San Gabriel Valley destination for Thai food. Despite its many charms, Monrovia couldn't compete when it came to tom kha kai or panang. Saladang, Saladang Song, Chandra, Suriya, City Thai, President (and Presidentwo) ... the list of Pasadena Thai restaurants is practically endless.

When we got a craving for pad thai, we stayed local. But that was before my conversation with Amy, New York sophisticate and bearer of all glad tidings (at least when it comes to undiscovered Asian restaurant gems).

Amy told me the food she’d had at Sweet Garlic, the then-newly opened Thai place on Myrtle, was better than any in LA. The fact that the owners were neighbors wasn't a factor; the satay was to die for, the duck dishes were magnificent, the shrimp were ... well, I had to try them for myself. She mentioned that the owner had worked at Saladang (or maybe Saladang Song) and told me she’d meet me there in an hour.

Daisy Mint
1218 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena
(626) 792-2999
No liquor/Major cards

Well, there’s no arguing with Amy. (Did I mention that she's a New Yorker?) But once seated across from her, I had to admit that most of what she’d said was true. We started at the top of the 11-item appetizer list and worked our way down. The crabmeat cheese puffs were sinful — filled with molten cream cheese, mayonnaise, onion and (fake) crab. The sweet plum dipping sauce was perfect.

Next were fresh summer rolls, with a nice peanut dip. The same sauce served the fat and juicy beef and chicken satay, well marinated and slightly charred. Amy agreed that the sauce could have benefited from a little more heat. And then there were the complex spinach wraps, with their intriguing toasted coconut, peanuts, ginger and diced lime filling and intense tamarind dip.

We had no room for more, so I had to make a second visit with my husband. Grilled eggplant salad with a tart lime dressing was a fantastic starter. The chicken coconut soup was quite sweet and not as creamy as Suriya's — still our benchmark. Similarly, Sweet Garlic's version of pineapple fried rice was good, but not as good as President Thai's, made with bits of honey sausage.

Its chicken panang (with peas, carrots, pumpkin and coconut milk) was excellent. But the hit of the evening for me was one of the Sweet Garlic grills — honey pork. The meat was marinated with honey and spices, then charred. It was unsauced, but served with a tart green-apple salsa that was out of this world. Once I had tried it I was willing to admit that Monrovia, from then on, could claim a first-class Thai restaurant.

So, when Amy called a couple of weeks ago to let me know that Sweet Garlic was no more and that I had to try her neighbors’ new place, Daisy Mint, I was worried. The restaurant was being touted as Asian “fusion” and I was certain the dishes we’d liked the best would have been shelved to make way for other recipes. But a glance at the menu told me almost everything was still in place.

The only thing missing (other than the homemade ginger tea I used to love) was the spinach wraps. But these had been replaced with diminutive but dynamite peanut dumplings ($4.50) and yummy salmon wraps with herbs, mint and avocado ($6.50) — a fair trade.

There was indeed a branching out of culinary interest evident in such dishes as Shanghai dumplings ($3.50), pollack roe-rice-seaweed wraps ($4.50), beef noodle soup ($7.50), kimchi fried rice with spicy bean paste ($8.50) and Korean rib-eye with kimchi ($16.50).

Only the daisy noodles, a pad thai variant ($8.50), disappointed. The flavor was good but the rice pasta clumped together like sticky rice. Better to order glass noodles shrimp in black soy sauce ($10.50) or spaghetti and black mussels stir-fried in chili ($10.50).

The artsy interior of Sweet Garlic melded with all the other artsy interiors of all the other restaurants on Myrtle. But the artsy interior of Daisy Mint, with its ornate chandelier and walls dappled with (mostly empty) picture frames, is a thing unto itself.

Little Daisy Mint was full to the brim with eager patrons by the time we finished lunch, even though it has not yet gotten a beer and wine license. And, if ever a business gave hope of better times to come, it's Daisy Mint, thriving in arid soil like the Leiber/Stoller's Rose in Spanish Harlem.

Best of luck to you, Daisy Mint owners, and welcome home!