I can smell pad see ew a mile away. I mean that literally—I live approximately a mile from the only Thai Town in the United States, so I suppose it makes sense. But even if you don’t live within spitting distance of a cultural enclave with an unusually high concentration of Thai restaurants, pad see ew is one of the more accessible Thai noodle dishes. What’s not to like? Chewy rice noodles, a savory sauce, veggies, and a protein—it’s simple and delicious and appeals to a lot of palates. But can Trader Joe’s pull off a quality frozen pad see ew? That’s what we needed to find out.
Trader Joe’s Pad See Ew certainly looks the part. You get rice noodles, veggies, and tofu, all in a soy-based sauce. But after I cooked it in the microwave and started to dig in, I noticed some interesting choices on Trader Joe’s part. For one thing, Trader Joe’s Pad See Ew contains carrots, which I’d never seen before. This meal is vegan, so my guess is that they simply wanted to bulk it up a little more. That said, the tofu is hard to locate—it appears to be standing in for scrambled egg rather than a protein like beef or chicken. There are, however, a lot of Chinese broccoli stems in the mix. Now let’s talk about how this tastes…
- Trader Joe’s Pad See Ew
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Pros: I love the chewy rice noodles in this dish. They absorb a lot of savory flavor from the garlic and soy sauce, so this meal is pretty packed with umami through and through. Let’s see, what’s another pro? Well…it was easy to prepare! Two minutes in the microwave, a little stir, and back in for two more minutes. That’s hard to mess up, even for the most inept cooks out there.
Cons: Those broccoli stems I mentioned earlier? Well, they’re bitter. I get it. We’re talking about Chinese broccoli. There should be some bitterness, but not this much. It was such an assault on my taste buds that I had to guzzle water after every single bite. Additionally, Trader Joe’s boasted about the “snap” of the carrots in their description of the dish, but the carrots are so thin that there’s no snap whatsoever. My last gripe about Trader Joe’s Pad See Ew? The serving size! This dish’s ideal use case is work lunch, right? Weirdly, there are two servings in this box—who is splitting and sharing this? Not I, which means I ate the entire thing. Yes, every last bitter stem of Chinese broccoli included, and I was still hungry. So, really, it is a single serving—but with two servings’ worth of calories.
Much like their veggie pad Thai, Trader Joe’s Pad See Ew misses the mark in more ways than one. It certainly won’t change your life. Even if you don’t live near Thai Town, you’re probably better off ordering in.