ARAWAN, a Thai restaurant nestled in a seedy East Sahara strip mall, is the perfect example of how restaurants change, how we change, and how so many of the reviews and comments relating to popular food culture are badly outdated and simply no longer apply.
A history: A few years ago, I solicited comments and recommendations from readers on new places to try here in Las Vegas. Someone (forgive me for forgetting who it was) recommended ARAWAN THAI. We gave ARAWAN a try and — wham! This place was terrific! A three-course meal with everything made fresh, always clean, a wonderful atmosphere, comfortable tables and chairs, and excellent service was the best $40 lunch for two in town. Between 2019-2021, we visited ARAWAN 20 times. Always outstanding. A great discovery.
Then, about a year ago, ARAWAN began making changes. They cut back on quality. The homemade dessert (often Panna Cotta) was eliminated. The staff, who– as in Cheers–always “knew our names,” morphed into strange faces, anonymity, and utter indifference. We began visiting less and less and finally, ARAWAN fell off our Las Vegas restaurant screen.
See — this is how things go in restaurants. Reading a Yelp review from 2018 means dogshit. A 4.6 star rating (out of 5) rating is irrelevant. Even experts who review the restaurant and have genuine credentials for judgment are sometimes compromised. Some establishments simply slide on quality and service and become distant memories of former greatness.
We gave up on ARAWAN.
Then, about 6 months ago Ashley Adams, my dear friend from Boston came into town. For reasons I won’t get into out to time and space, Ashley recommended we go to ARAWAN. I zipped my mouth and let Ashley make the call, and even if the restaurant would have turned out to be a disappointment, the meal still would have been worth it. Sometimes, the company we keep outshines the cuisine or the culinary experience.
Anyways, ARAWAN was excellent on that visit. I don’t recall many details, but it just seemed like things were better than I remembered. Who knows? Maybe we just got lucky on that particular day. Perhaps Ashley charmed me so extravagantly that I dismissed a shit meal and was pillow-princessed by Ashley’s extraordinary storytelling abilities and infectious personality. Maybe the eggrolls sucked, but Ashley’s remembrances of Foxwoods and the table conversation of the mid-1990s was so mesmerizing that I missed the culinary carnage. I left our casual lunch thinking–fuck, that place is pretty good! It’s back on my merry-go-round of great lunch spots.
So today, we happened to be close by to Sahara Seedy Central. No desire to visit the swinger club around the block. No curiosity as to the old Lotus of Siam location. No lamenting of the closed billiards hall where Bruce Kramer and I use to down pints that’s now renovated into a Tagalog-language Christian store. We went in, ordered, and were DELIGHTED by the experience.
Out the door with two lunch specials, tax, and tip, for $39. It was outstanding.
So, ARAWAN has now come full circle. Loved it., Disappointing. Curious. Love it again. We shall see what tomorrow brings.
The point is — restaurants change. We change. Nothing stays the same.
In the coming days and weeks ahead, I will look at my OLD reviews and update them. The places I recommended might not be valid anymore. And, a few spots where the grade was low, might have improved.
Hey Ashley, you need to visit Las Vegas more often!
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