Hot and sour tom yum soup is a Thai staple that can start off a meal at virtually any restaurant. At its best, it’s glorious: bright and intense with a complex palate, at once spicy, sour, sweet, garlicky, peppery, citrusy, and often holding a little funky punch from chili paste.
At its worst, it’s a timid mix that omits some or most of those components.
In a way, it’s a barometer for what’s to come that can tell you a lot about the quality of a Thai restaurant, and the tom yum at Hug Baan Thai hit all the right notes. The rest of the menu does the same, and that’s great news in a neck of the woods where some of the Thai options aren’t very satisfying.
Hug Baan opened in late 2023 in Sala Thai’s former home in a Sterling Heights strip mall. I don’t know much about the new owners, but I can tell you that they seem to love Christmas — the small spot was fully decked out for the holidays with lights, trees, elves, bulbs, and tinsel. (Truly magical for a man who goes by “Christmastom” during the holiday season.)
I got the tom yum, which translates to “mixed” and “boiled,” in several forms: cups of the basic tom yum and with wonton were great, as was the kuoy tiew tom yum. The latter is a meal-sized bowl with thin rice noodles, mushrooms, lime leaf, lime juice, coconut milk, green onions, and bamboo sprouts, as well as tons of minced garlic, chicken, cilantro, chilis, and some big slabs of fried, crispy shrimp chips. Hug Baan’s tom yum just has more depth than most, and a fried rice tom yum plate was similarly balanced and awesome. The heat can be dictated but it’s meant to make you sweat a little, and it did that at medium level.
We also tried the larb, a “salad” of a super flavorful dish of minced chicken or beef, and the beef is definitely superior. Each has a gritty base with plenty of umami from being cooked in fish sauce, coriander, and a brightening acidic element from the lime. The meat is accented texturally from the crunchy shallots, and at medium spice there was a generous portion of heat-radiating chili. The salad component is made up of big folds of lettuce into which one wraps the meat. It can also be scooped with slices of crunchy and cooling cucumber.
Another highlight: the massaman curry. It’s a deep, deep, deep dish — fragrant and complex. The coconut milk-based curry is slightly sweet and savory, and somehow bold and mellow, and decidedly earthy with a silky texture. A treat. I’m guessing on its composition, but the red-orange broth can be composed of coconut milk, peanuts, palm sugar, star anise, cinnamon, and chili paste. Maybe there’s nutmeg in the mix? It arrives with crunchy peanuts, onions, potatoes, and carrots.
A close cousin is the peanut curry, which is also deep, complex, fragrant, and silky, but a bit richer, earthier, and, as the name suggests, nutty. It’s made with red curry, coconut milk, ground peanuts, brown sugar, and lime, as well as bamboo shoots, carrots, eggplant, and onions.
The fresh rolls were a bit odd. On the first trip, they came as advertised and seemed to have a vinaigrette in them, in addition to the brown sauce. The next two visits they didn’t have the advertised mint or cilantro, which left them missing a key element, and there was no vinaigrette. But the brown sauce is excellent, so they still worked.
For the most visually interesting dish in town, check out the pink noodle, which is a mess of bright pink, thin rice noodles that reminds me of spaghetti squash. It’s topped with yellow scrambled eggs, bean sprouts, and green onions. The pink color seems to owe to the use of fermented soy bean and chili pastes. The chicken tamarind was basically fried chicken in a sweet and salty brown sauce with fried shallots and eggplant that was good, but if you need fried chicken, try the panko breaded crispy chicken variety with the drunken noodle — awesome. The potato pancakes are herby little triangles that are almost gelatinous in texture, which I didn’t love, but all my co-diners did.
The space is small, and was filled with a diverse group of diners. This was truly one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve encountered in ages.
