Mao Dok Mai / The Drunken Flower

Happy New Year! Wishing all of you dear readers a wonderful 2013 with lots of happiness, joy, and lots of great food! 

After the Christmas and New Year excess and parties, what's a more appropriate way to start the year by reviewing Mao Dok Mai aka The Drunken Flower - Nice and cosy pub / bar with a good selection of drinks and beer, groovy music and interesting and yummy snacks. 

I went on a Sunday night - by far not their busiest nights, with only a few patrons when I was there. A lovely black labrador came to greet me as I sat down to wait for my friend.

Looking through the drinks menu, I spied a drink called "The Drunken Tom-Yum"- Sangsom, lime, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, soda. I just had to try it! It turned out to be very pleasant, refreshing and easy to drink drink, tangy and slightly spicy, but not "strong" at all - which is fine with me.  95 baht.

What to order is the next big question. Luckily, they had some recommendations which included:

Mao Dok Mai - smoked pork loin with wasabi, shoyu sauce, carrots and celery. 85 baht. Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? The dish turned out to be quite a bit bit smaller than expected, and not exactly what I imagined. It was quite interesting though, but the wasabi smeared around the pork cubes was quite overpowering. The whole thing was a bit like chewy salmon sashimi with lots of wasabi.

Beef Burger With Drunken Sauce. 85 baht. Also quite small. I suppose smaller dishes meant we could try more things! The curious thing about this burger was that there was no bread. The waitress explained..."Yes, it's a breadless burger!" LOL.

This little burger patty was topped with "drunken sauce" which turned out to be a tomato salsa with thai flavorings (lime, etc). This "burger" was actually very nice - very tender and moist patty - very well cooked, and tasted great too. Served with a very nice and fresh side salad.

Still felt quite hungry, we asked for a recommendation from the waitress - something that patrons like to order. She said unhesitatingly, "Grilled Beef with Drunken Sauce", 95 baht. She also told us that this was going to be a more substantial portion.

This was our favourite dish for the night. Sliced grilled beef, very nicely flavoured, topped with the same tomato salsa drunken sauce. This time we could taste a lot more of the tanginess of the sauce, or rather, dressing. It would be a really nice snack to have with beer.

Other regular Thai dishes are also available, as are Mexican dishes. Vegetarian (as in tofu) versions of some dishes are available too. I haven't tried their Mexican food, but if you have, please tell us what you think in the comment section below. :-)

For music lovers, there is live music at The Drunken Flower on Wed-Sat nights from 9pm. Other nights - music is played from their vinyl collection.

Mao Dok Mai / The Drunken Flower
28/3 Soi 17 Nimmanhaemin Rd
T. Suthep, A. Muang, Chiang Mai
Tel: 053 894210, 081 716 6036
Opens: 5pm till midnight



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