October 16, 2002

ONE MENU HAD a special section called "Normal Dishes" – or something like that. Place across the street had roasted ducks and chickens and other animals hanging in the window, calling out to me like sirens call sailors. Me and Punk were sailing down San Bruno Ave. looking for something to eat. The Vietnamese sandwich place we'd wanted had been closed on account of Sunday, but I'll tell you what: places to eat were everywhere and, in many cases, open.

I'll tell you what else: We were crazy hungry. You know what a dangerous combination that can be, when you're so hungry and there are so many choices and all of them look so, so good from the sidewalk that you wind up sitting down on the curb and crying.... No? You don't know what that's like? What are you – decisive?

Well, lucky for us our decision sort of decided itself, more or less, when we went to look into this Thai joint a few doors down and – neverminding the family of eight at a window table laden with colorfully delicious-looking dishes you could practically smell right through the glass – there was a TV with baseball on in back! This was game four of the Giants-Braves series, one of two do-or-dies the Giants faced. The Yankees having been eliminated the day before, I had a resurgent interest in baseball, so in we went, and down we sat (in back, in front of the TV). Food we ordered.

While the Giants did, as opposed to dying, Punk and me pigged out on egg rolls ($5.95 for six), a beef salad ($5.95), sweet-and-sour pork ($5.95), and fried catfish ($7.95). It was quite a feast, even for two starving-artistical sportsters such as us. In fact, I think there might have been a wee bit of sweet-and-sour stuff left on that one plate, I'm embarrassed to admit. No pork, but still....

Peppers are important too. And pineapples and tomatoes and cucumbers – that was what all went into the sweet-and-sour pork. It was a lot better than I'd expected. I'd never had Thai-style sweet-and-sour stuff before; I'm not a big fan of Chinese sweet-and-sours, but this was really tasty, thanks especially to the pineapples and tomatoes. And pork.

The catfish was my favorite, though. It was big, juicy pieces of boneless fish, breaded and deep-fried – which right there would have been enough, for my money, but then they go ahead and serve it drenched in this wonderful red curry with basil and, and –

Let me change the subject before I hyperventilate. Egg rolls. Thai egg rolls, which are my favorite kind. They had ground chickens in them, plus celery, carrots, silver noodles, and water chestnuts.

And then the other appetizer we had was a salad, yum neua, which consisted of juicy slices of rare beef with red cabbage, cucumber, celery, mint leaves, onion, lemon grass, lime juice, and whatever that Thai seasoning is that tastes to me like essence of barn. What is that? It's why I don't like pad Thai, and it's why I didn't love this dish, in spite of all of the above-mentioned yumminess, and even though it reminded me (speaking of yummy) of that incredible raw beef thing I had at Yummy-Yummy.

Charm-Thai's got a great menu with a lot of ducky reasons to go back (red curry duck, duck noodle soup, and roast duck salad); almost everything's under seven bucks, and what isn't seems special, like that catfish dish, and seafood combo stuff.

I'd love to be able to tell you something about the atmosphere, but I can't because I was too engrossed in the do-or-die baseball game to notice much else. So, atmospherically, you've got the Giants on TV, and if they don't win the season is over, but they do win. It's that kind of a place. It's a great place.

Game five (in Atlanta – Giants did, Braves died, hooray!) I watched at home, but I had to take my little TV outside and wedge the antenna between a bag of charcoal and the chimney, because that's the only way I could get any kind of reception. And now, so long as I've got a moment, I want to say a thing about the Atlanta Braves' braindrained zombie fans and their tomahawk chop chant thing: You suck. Cut it out. You give insensitive politically-incorrect native-American-dissing team lovers a bad name, and I hope you all have long and torturous off-seasons with your sorry-ass Falcons. I almost couldn't even watch the game because of you and your incessantly stupid (and offensive) oh oh oh, oh oh oh shit. Not to mention the big red foam chop-chop hatchets, which scared the shit out of my chickens.

Charm-Thai. 2546 San Bruno (at Felton), S.F. (415) 467-3111. Daily, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; 5-9:30 p.m. Takeout available. Beer and wine. MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.