Curb the Cold on Chunxiu Lu With Thai-Style Snacks and Milk Tea at Yaksa

On a frigid weekend evening, The Crib or Yu can seem like a beaming beacon, welcoming the cold and hungry passers-by at the corner of the Chunxiu Lu. Thai food is like the falsetto in the chorus – intense, spicy, and flavorful. Nothing will whisk you away from the grim and grey Beijing winter quite like the bold and vaguely tropical flavors of Thai food – especially at Yaksa.

Nestled on the second floor of The Crib, Yaksa Thai Food is on the left end near Nooxo and Carne, with black-and-white mosaic tiles forming the name under the counter, which wraps around a large open kitchen. You could get an easy meal here for RMB 40-60 of noodles, pork rice, or curry chicken rice. There are Thai snacks on the menu, too: shrimp cakes (RMB 48), chicken satay (RMB 42), and mango pudding.

We ordered the popular fried chicken legs (RMB 32), and stir-fried beef and eggplant (RMB 46) at this supposedly "fast" food stall, though it took a good 25 minutes to get our food. The fried chicken leg was covered with a layer of fried garlic and paired with chili sauce. Though the skin was crisp, the meat wasn’t juicy, but the house-made chili sauce won it back with an intense hot kick.

The stir-fried minced beef and eggplant was super spicy, featuring shredded bell pepper and a heavy sauce. For an additional RMB 10, you can get a hot cup of milk tea, which also required almost a half an hour to prepare. It was amazingly rich with the harmony between the black tea and condensed milk easing the burn on my tongue. You could also get a Chang beer for RMB 25, and imagine yourself at a Southeast Asian beach resort. Is it authentic as the street food you’ve tried at the local market of Hua Hin or Chiang Mai? Probably not. But the spicy snacks could warm you up in the fast-approaching bitter cold of winter.

Yaksa Thai Food
Daily 10am-10pm. 2/F, The Crib, 1 Gongti Beilu, Chunxiu Lu, Chaoyang District (5717 6895)
泰面兽泰餐：朝阳区春秀路工体北路1号院育膳房二层

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Photos: Tracy Wang