I love food. But not any just food, food that creates different sensations and evokes new feelings and memories. Food that brings people together and encircles them in quiet conversation and relaxed laughter. This is definitely the experience we had this past weekend while visiting Southern Utah. Benja Thai is one of Reid’s favorite Thai restaurants. He frequents St. George often for work or to visit his parents. This time BabyTravels and I accompanied him to visit his parents over Easter weekend.

We decided to go to Benja for lunch with the promise of curry and coconut rice. Who could resist that? It was beautiful, the restaurant is relaxed enough to take your wife, mother and baby for a lunch get together but fancy enough to take someone you are trying to impress. The food is reasonably priced, delicious and had excellent service (which was important because I needed my curry in a hurry!).

We ordered the Pad Thai and two orders of yellow curry. The Pad Thai was sweet and spicy and was enough to put us in a trance. But the real show was the yellow curry. Reid got his a level 6 spicy (out of 5) and we got ours a level 3. I would say a level 3 was perfect- I tried Reid’s and my eyes immediately began to water, yet it didn’t seem to phase Reid one bit. The combination of being able to smell the spices of the curry and then taste them created an all out senses euphoria. We were in a heavenly daze as we slurped noodles from the Pad Thai and enjoyed the curry. But the REAL show stopper was the coconut rice and mangos. By FAR my all time favorite dessert served at Thai restaurants and really it was what I was looking forward to most. The coconut rice was sweet and rich with the perfect texture and the mangos dipped in the coconut cream? Still having dreams about it.

I definitely give these restaurant five stars for flavor, service, price and the smile I had on my face as we left. Don’t miss it if you are in Saint George, Utah or passing through on your way to Zion’s or the Grand Canyon.

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Tags: restaurant review, Saint George, Utah

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.