Finally Authentic Thai in San Diego!
	Reviewed By howie	Sep 17, 2008
Tags: thai larb

I had the great fortune of traveling to Thailand 4 years ago. Being a food fanatic, my fondest memories of the trip all involved food. I've never had Thai food like that before - spicy, sour, salty, sweet all at the same, all intensely strong yet perfectly balanced.

In the four years since, I've searched in vain in San Diego for those same elusive flavors that I experience in Thailand. But now I've finally found a place that gets it right - Sab-E-Lee. Sab-E-Lee has the most authentic Thai food I've had in San Diego.

I visited recently with a bunch of foodie friends (Kirk from mmm-yoso, Candice from SD CityBeat, and Josh formerly from SD CityBeat). We started off with a Bamboo Shoot Salad - the bamboo is lightly stir-fried in a pungent spicy sauce with a lot of lime and chili. They served it with a wedge of cabbage. You can take a leaf of cabbage and pick up some bamboo with it and shove it in your mouth. One bite of this dish took me straight back to my trip to Thailand.

We also ordered a catfish larb and raw beef salad are similar to the bamboo salad in that lime, chili, and fish sauce are prominent, but the dishes are still distinct and delicious. The catfish larb adds a nice meatiness to the mix. And the raw beef salad is wonderful. The raw beef has a great texture and the addition of toasted rice powder adds crunch and slightly nutty flavor to the dish.

Next up was the Northeastern-style sausage. The sausage had an intriguing tangy note to it. They serve it with slices of ginger, peanuts, and lettuce. You wrap them all together, and the result is fantastic. The ginger adds a bit of zip and hint of sweetness. Again the balance of flavors is what makes the dish work so well.

Sab-E-Lee also serves some less exotic dishes. I tried the Pad See Ew and Panang Curry, and they are also very well executed. But don't neglect ordering the larbs and salad dishes, which no one in San Diego does even remotely as well.