My tongue's on fire

And I like it!

I'm still TDY ("on a business trip" for you gentiles), and I found a new restaurant. I thought I had merely missed it during earlier trips, but the owner told me he had been open only 3 months. It's a Thai-German restaurant called the Kölner Hof, which means something like the Cologne courtyard. This is at least the third Thai restaurant I've seen here in Griesheim. (Who knew this place was such a magnet for Thai immigrants?) It features kölsch, a beer from Cologne (Köln), a German menu made up mostly of schnitzels, and a reasonable selection of Thai dishes, heavy on the curries. I had thood man plàa (a fish cake with lots of cilantro) and a duck salad that was the spiciest food I've had since I left the US…that I didn't make myself. The owner warned me it was spicy, and I told him I was familiar with Thai food. So he brought me a spoon. The Thai normally eat with spoon and fork, not chopsticks. They eat soup with chopsticks, which sounds like a bad Polish joke (are there good Polish jokes?), but it's because it's noodle soup and all the vendors of that used to be Chinese. So it's kind of tradition.

As always, I spent much of my time observing the other patrons. There was a table of four ladies out for the evening. At least two were sisters. Then this cute young Thai-German couple came in. They were going back and forth between English and German, and I think she may have still been learning German. But they apparently understood each other well enough to get married and be expecting. He reminded me of my pal Eric from church back home. And come to think of it, I suppose she could have been seen as a Thai version of Mandy.

I'm going out for ice cream now.