Lafayette Restaurant Project: June 2022

Bee's has moved to a permanent location in Erie as of 2024.

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I don’t usually include food trucks in the restaurant project unless they are always parked in the same place, but I made an exception for Bee’s Thai Kitchen because Bee Kisich lives in Lafayette, and her truck is parked in Lafayette every week, probably about two-thirds of the time overall. To find her location on any given night, check her Facebook page, where the current schedule appears at the top. In addition to her usual rotation among Cellar West, Liquid Mechanics, Romero’s, and East Simpson Coffee Co., she makes regular appearances at Industrial Revolution (Erie), Fritz Family Brewing (Niwot), and a few other places, so check it out!

We decided to go on a night when Bee was parked at Liquid Mechanics so we could meet some friends who are fond of that brewery. It was a nice evening, and we found a pleasant spot on the patio and went inside to get some beer after ordering our food. The LM patio is right on the highway, but the grassy strip and big trees counterbalance the traffic, and it was actually a very nice place to hang out on a warm spring evening (this was a couple of weeks ago because I am running behind again!). We had to wait a little while for our food, but we were expecting that because there was a bit of a line at the food truck when we arrived.

There were four of us, so we got two orders of two appetizers to share: roti puffs (chicken, potato, onion, corn, snow peas, carrots, herbs and spices rolled up in a roti wrapper and deep fried, served with cucumber salad) and shrimp egg rolls (large shrimp wrapped in egg-roll wrappers and deep fried). Mike got drunken noodles (wide rice noodles stir fried with egg, cabbage, young pepper corn, ginger root, bell chili, onion, and sweet basil in chili garlic sauce), and Jane got green curry (carrot, eggplant, bell pepper, and Thai sweet basil cooked in green coconut curry served with steamed jasmine rice); I’m not sure what meats/proteins they chose. G got red curry (for which I can’t find a menu description but was similar to the green curry except red) with beef, and I got pad thai (stir fried rice noodles with egg, green onion, bean sprouts, diced tofu, and ground peanuts in tangy sauce) with chicken. Finally, I got one order of mango sticky rice to share for dessert.

We all thought our food was excellent. G said the roti puffs were the best thing he had eaten in a long time, and the rest of us agreed. We also liked the shrimp egg rolls, and we all devoured our entrees. G liked his curry so much that he rated the meal one of the best in the whole restaurant project. The curries were packed with fresh vegetables, and Mike also had quite a lot in his drunken noodles (not in the pad thai, however, as it does not contain veggies). Jane said her green curry was delicious but not spicy enough (she asked for “spicy” but said next time she would ask for “Thai hot”), G (who also asked for spicy) said his was almost too hot, and Mike and I (who both asked for medium) found ours to be a little beyond our tolerance but delicious anyway—so we persevered! The mango sticky rice was AMAZING. I would go back just for that.

I tried a flight of Liquid Mechanics beers to wash it all down: Dark Foreboding (dark lager), Dammit Patrick (maibock), peanut butter porter, Flightless (pilsner), and Hopacity (IPA). My favorite by far was the Dark Foreboding.

* Lafayette Restaurant Project Redux: visiting all the new places that have opened since the end of the previous round of the LRP.