Aiyara Thai Cafe
Aiyara Thai Cafe
1010 Harlow Road
Springfield, OR 97477
(541) 736-8306
Eugenified.com rating: 
Loading ...
As you may already know, Eugene is not the home of great Thai food. Acceptable, maybe, but not great. So I was fairly skeptical when I heard good things about Aiyara Thai Cafe in Springfield. Of course, our neighbors to the east (Springtucky a.k.a. Sprangfield) are not well known for their sophisticated tastes in world cuisines, so that could be the explanation for the overly optimistic reviews. But the question still remained, could it measure up to the more selective standards of Eugenifites?
Well, the answer is now 100% clear: yes and no. As it turns out, Aiyara appears to suffer from a serious case of bipolar disorder. Or maybe it’s schizophrenia? (Does schizophrenia still exist? Ask your secret friend what he thinks on this issue). Some of their dishes are really good, some are so so, and others are downright depressing (like your secret friend when he refuses to reveal himself to anyone else). In other words, Aiyara Thai is really a hit or miss affair. Some examples of said hits and Mrs. (damn spellchecker!) are as follows:
-Panang Curry was excellent. Probably the best in the Eugene/Sprangfield area. The secret was its very nicely balanced and complex sauce. Serving size was ok, but not great. It comes with rice on the side for Sprangfield intelligentsia that don’t understand the concept of shared meals.
-Thai Iced Tea, on the other hand, was less than excellent, i.e. it sucketh. First of all, it had a weird cardamon taste which I have never tasted in Thai iced tea anywhere in the world. Not bad, but slightly reminiscent of a bathroom air freshener in India. The big problem is that the tea flavor, assuming there was any there, was buried by a plethora of Lucite Latex Satin Finish super creamy milk. End result, it was more akin to drinking an ice cold glass of orange-tinted melted vanilla ice cream (without the vanilla). If they called it “Orange Tinted Melted Vanilla Ice Cream” on the menu, I might have been less disappointed. On the other hand, the cheesy plastic “glass” in which it was served probably would have annoyed me no matter what the drink was named.
-Spicy Fried Rice: After the Thai iced tea, I was pinching up my face in a painful (to others) expression of discontent (trust me, you never want to see this ugly face), but this spicy fried rice wiped that look right off. Shockingly, they actually made it spicy as I requested, plus the veggies were crisp and tasty. Most importantly, it was not too oily (the usual problem with restaurant-prepared fried rice). Easily the second best dish on the table after the Panang Curry.
Tom Kha Gai (Spicy Coconut Chicken Soup): Sorta an unrefined, homestyle version of this classic Thai soup. It seemed to be more “assembled” than “cooked”. Like the Thai iced tea, it was WAY too milky and seemed to have completely escaped the clutches of the head spice-adder in the kitchen. Thusly bland and milky, it would have been great with some Rice Krispies, but as a standalone Thai soup, it was found to be sorely lacking. Tom Kha Gai, I banish you to heck. Be gone!
Pad Thai: Not quite “there”. Was it too sweet or too sour or what? I could not really tell you. I think it was all of those things together. Or maybe it was lacking something? At least it came with a genuine lime for squeezing over the top. That’s better than even Ta Ra Rin, the current Thai food champ in Eugene. Unfortunately, one poor little lonely lime was not enough to overcome the “off” taste of this classic dish at Aiyara.
Fish Cakes: Word has it, they taste like a block of salt dipped in tuna water. I did not personally try them (In my opinion, the words fish and cake should never be used side by side in any sentence), but I got this report from a reliable fellow spy diner.
Non-food Issues:
Decor: Well, it’s clean. Sorta like a cafeteria that was repainted with yellow paint and had some Thai-ish stuff stuck up on the walls. About as much Thai atmosphere as…well…a cafeteria painted yellow with some Thai-ish stuff stuck up on the walls. Still, gotta give them credit for keeping it nearly spotless. Compare and contrast with the hippie restaurants in Eugene that actually seem proud of their “natural” grungy-grimy facilities.
Waitress: Call me a racist, but a young blond caucasian teenager who can not pronounce the names of the dishes is not exactly the most confidence-inspiring arrangement. Hardworking, friendly, and easy on the eyes, but definitely lacking in the Thai version of je ne sais what.
Spicy Factor: I command you to order all your food at “Level 5″ spicy, which is their maximum. You will then receive your dishes somewhere between level 1 and level 5. It appears to be random. Still, I guess if I had not specified level 5, everything would have been a level 1, and that would not have been good news at all.
Price/Value: Oddly enough, despite all of the comments on the internet, this place is a little overpriced considering the size of the portions and the less than so so atmosphere. I suppose if you order a single lunch special set, it might seem reasonably priced, but any sort of decent full meal is unreasonably costly…plus tip. Pretty much everything is $9 (unless you go for something with seafood which costs $13) which sounds cheapish. But for a nice meal, two people will need at least a soup, two main dishes, and a noodle dish. That’s $36 already. Adding on two Thai Iced Teas for $5 and a 15% tip brings the grand total to $47. Any way you measure it, $23.50 per person for this place is NOT a good deal.
Summary: I’m torn. I’d like to go back for the Panang Curry and Spicy Fried Rice. Who knows…maybe they have one or two other good dishes? But it’s still annoying to have to skip classics like Thai Iced Tea and Pad Thai. Hmmmm…I am going to say 2.5 stars for now, and I will add another half star if I ever go back and find two other good dishes.
Eugenified.com rating:
Loading ...
August 21st, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Their Pad See Ew was pretty strange too. Half-sweet, half-vinegar, all strange. Keep up the hilarious reviews.
August 21st, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Sounds like they use a similar spice mix in the Pad See Ew that we tasted in their Pad Thai.
September 16th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
You are the worst writer in the history of writing. Please stop.
September 16th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Haha! Thanks for your input.
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:00 pm
I love Thai food, even though I have a hard time finding an acceptable combination of freshness, flavor, portion, and price. The restaurant game is admittedly a tough business, with murderously hard work and a brutally competitive market in this area — but Thai entrepreneurs in particular seem to excel at providing overly costly snippets of tasty food made mostly from inexpensive ingredients.
Looking for a decent lunch one weekday about a year ago, I ventured into Aiyara’s. Noticing the Sprangtucky-ish ambiance, I ordered my green curry with chicken lunch special at the hottest available level of spice. When it arrived, the curry was barely mild. It tasted reasonably good, but was also hardly more than tepid in temperature.
The teensy shreds of chicken interspersed here and there in the dish seemed acceptably fresh, but the bed of raw shredded cabbage and carrots on which it rested suffered from carrots that were dried-out and discolored at the edges. Even before it looks old, aging produce loses most of its nutritional value.
I walked out still hungry, out the price of a hot lunch, and feeling ripped-off. Of course, the real standard-bearer for that ultra-dependable “used” feeling is Kuraya’s, which has set the standard for Thai in Springfield by doling out much tastier, and even more expensive, little scraps of highway robbery in a much nicer atmosphere for the last thirty-odd years.
June 25th, 2010 at 11:40 am
Good review, Steve! Thanks.
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:26 am
As uber-Thai food lover and connoisseur all things Thai let me begin by saying I LOVE AIYARA. They are so unpretentious which is the case in so many Thai restaurants. Or at least is the case on the other side of the bridge (you know in Eugene).
I don’t technically live in Springfield anymore which I was proud to when I did. And just a side note I have my teeth and bathe and didn’t marry my cousin. Another side note that easy on the eyes waitress is my niece and she’s barley legal (I’m just saying)!
I’ve eaten at every Thai restaurant in the Eugene/Springfield/Salem area and some in Portland and Aiyara’s will always be number one for me. Next time you want it really hot ask for Rudy hot forget this 1-5 scale crap.
A little history on the restaurant the whole thing used to crammed into where only the kitchen is now, it maybe sat 10-15 people tops. They expanded in 2007 to the current dining room and have been adding additional decorative elements since. We generally have one dish per person and it is more than adequate in terms of portions. Also it’s worth pointing out (to spoiled and demanding Americans) Thai people generally eat their foods tepid. Curries are often served room temperature, fish are cooked with their heads on and all parts are eaten. It is so fun to serve “thai food” to the people in front and then to go have real “thai food” in the back. I’m quite sure most people in the dining room would be revolted at fish with their heads on, eyeballs being consumed lukewarm curries and various other delicious things that traditionally Thai people eat (Ever watch Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern?). In fact yesterday I visited the fubonn asian market in Portland and sorry peeps but you can get chicken feet and kidneys and hearts and fish products up the wazoo. Americans and I think even Eugenians not just Springtuckians like their hamburgers, hot dogs and such. Sorry, I am feeling rather spunky this A.M. but I had to give a little shout out to my very favorite restaurant!
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:36 am
Thanks for the input, Anon.
I’d suggest that the owner/chef should do a thorough analysis/comparison of his recipes compared to, say, Ta Ra Rin in Eugene.
First of all, he needs to get the “spice rating” issue under control. Simplify it to “mild, medium, or hot”…then actually deliver what the customer requests. (This problem with dishes being the wrong spice level has been mentioned by several reviewers on other sites).
Secondly, he needs to straighten out the odd tastes of important dishes/drinks like Pad Thai, Tom Kha Gai, and Thai Iced Tea. Just buy some take-out from Ta Ra Rin and adjust the Aiyara recipe to match it. Simple.
Finally, the “easy on the eyes” waitress should sit down with the owners and record their pronunciations of the dish names, then go home and practice until she can at least sound SOMETHING like the original.