Friday takeaway dinner from She's Thai.

She’s Thai, 208 Somerville Rd, Kingsville. Phone: 9314 5556

Isn’t it some sort of bureaucratic insanity that sees kids start the new school year on a Thursday or Friday?

In any case, we’ve stumbled across the finish line of another week, including Bennie’s two-day week and my own commuting-and-driving routine.

We’re worn out and the house is out of food.

We’ve already been out on the fang once this week and will do so again some time over the weekend, so all we feel like is some quality sofa time.

It’s the perfect opportunity to take our local Thai joint, only sparingly frequented since our initial story, out for another spin.

Keeping the price down by cooking our own rice, going for two mains and ignoring the temptations of the entree list, we order red curry chicken and – wanting the crunch and zing of a stiry fry – the preow wahn, which is described as “sweet and sour using ‘royal cuisine’ style”.

Takeaway dinner from She's Thai.

Stir fry? Really?

Call it what you want – in our house we’ll call it soup.

Truly, our preow wahn is unlike anything we’ve ever come across before that has been even remotely stir fry.

The jumble of vegetables and pineapple is OK, but the gravy – soup! – is like a close cousin of the Cantonese sweet and sour.

A lame cousin.

Our red chicken curry is better, though fairly minimalist in terms of size.

What seems to be the same vegetable mix joins the chicken pieces is a gravy that separates out into its separate components.

Am I correct in assuming this signifies home-cooking, as opposed supermarket sauces and coconut milk overkill?

Aside from our stir fry being nothing we’d label as such and a disappointingly low level of spice and zing, our dinner goes OK but is still disappointing.

Surprisingly enough, that disappointment does little to dent our faith in the worthiness and integrity of She’s Thai.

Waiting to bat during the next day’s cricket match at Spotswood, Bennie calls it right: “It’d be better if we went there to eat their food!”

Not to mention relying on the staff for advice, making sure of much higher spice levels and more robust flavours, and maybe trying one of the handful of duck dishes.

And then there’s always the sticky and delicious massaman beef curry.

She's Thai - service with a smile!