Heh. We’ve been there in the last year or so. It was okay.
This problem of differentiation doesn’t seem to extend to other cuisines, so rather than tin palate, I’m going with Thai Blind Spot.
Take-out Chinese places, IMHO, generally have the same menu.
But they don’t all taste the same. Where I live, there’s one place where the egg foo yung is off the chain, but the joint around the corner can’t even fry scrambled eggs. And yet it may make killer low mein or have tastier egg rolls. So I pick and choose which take-out place to go to based on what I have a taste for.
Thai places are the same way to me. Not that Richmond has a glut of Thai places, but there’s one restaurant that makes khao pad that’ll make you want to slap your momma. The college dive down the road sucks on rice, but makes pretty good drunken noodles. The menus may be similar, but the actual offerings are not.
That’s why I made sure to mention the 10 year time period. Even the local restaurants we frequent can take a sudden downturn in quality. It’s been much worse in recent years with the declining economy. The search for a good place can be fun, but sometimes you just want to rely on getting a good meal.
I think I’m that way with traditional Italian food. It’s tasty, but it’s hard for me to distinguish an excellent red sauce from a good one, for example. I’d never thought about it before this way, as a blind spot. Interesting!
There are two Thai places near me, and they have distinctly different styles. One seems to have more runny sauces with a bit more emphasis on sourness (lemongrass?), and the other has thicker sauces with more savory flavors.
See, this is my favorite Thai dish, and varies wildly from place to place.
Some make it with ground or finely diced chicken (as I like it), some with big chicken chunks.
Some use holy basil (as the Thai name suggests), some with Thai or Italian sweet basil.
Some use lots of vegetables (like bell peppers) in the dish, others do not (I prefer it with no veggies, or with green beans)
Some go real easy on the chili peppers, even in the “hot” or “Thai hot” variant
Some go real easy on the fish sauce, if not skip it completely and substitute soy sauce
Some will top it with a fried egg (although usually you have to request this specifically)
For me, this dish should be stinky (from the fish sauce and garlic), spicy, and herbal (I don’t mind if they use Thai sweet basil instead of holy basil, even if it’s a different flavor), with just a hint of sweetness. The middle-of-the-road Thai restaurants turn out quite a different product, in my experience, more like a generic stir-fry that happens to have some basil thrown into it, rather than phat kraphao kai.
Exceptional though not fancy: Rod Dee in Porter Square, Cambridge. Cash only. Their tom yum soup (regular) and tum yum noodles soup with seafood, and pad kee mao are better than others in the neighborhood.
They have a roast pork dish on the board, not on the published menu - it’s called rad something daeng, I think. Sooooo good, but very much a winter dish, as it’s very hearty. Their fried chive dumplings are fantastic. Things I have had that were only meh include the larb and pad see you. Some friends rave about their fried rice with crispy chicken but I haven’t had it yet.
I had some totally unexciting duck from there, but others rave about the food. What you’re used to and personal tastes make these choices difficult. But they do deliver, for food while you work that’s a definite advantage.
I agree that personal taste and expectations affect restaurant preferences a lot. I wasn’t aware that Rod Dee delivered, but I walk by it on my way home so I’m all set without delivery.