Thai food is a truly wonderful class of cuisine. Riddled with exotic spices, tender meats, and tons of complex, savory flavors, Thai cuisine has a solid footing in the Tampa Bay area as one of the more popular international cuisines of the past 10 years.
With this popularity comes diversity. For all the common themes that run through a particular geographical area's cuisine, Thai restaurants in Tampa come in a wide variety when it comes to preparation methods, flavors, and creativity.
Thai X-Press Cafe in Brandon is definitely unique in this aspect, but falls pretty far from greatness when it comes to the execution. This small cafe sits in a shopping plaza at the intersection of Lithia Pinecrest and Lumsden Road and offers an assortment of traditional and contemporary Thai dishes prepared lightning quick and made to order.
Thai X-Press offers a variety of classic Thai appetizers. A small portion of their vegetable rolls came wrapped in thin, rice wraps with an excessive amount of bland, sliced carrots, cucumbers, and other unmemorable vegetables. The accompanying ginger sauce was pretty delicious - a great balance of savory and sweet - but couldn't do much to save the obnoxiously un-flavorful vegetable rolls.
Their specialty, pineapple fried rice sounds intriguing, but that's about as far as it gets. The rice packed a hefty curry flavor, but falls short at the hands of dry, overcooked pork, syrupy sweet pineapple, and the strange taste this combination yields. At $10.99, this thing is well-portioned but far too expensive, especially in comparison to comparable, and frankly, much better Thai rice dishes out there.
Have you been to Thai X-Press in Brandon? Disagree? Agree? Let us know with your own rating and review on the 813area Thai X-Press business listing.
