Thai One On

This post has been waiting for me to write it for about two weeks, but when you have a full time job and just dream of blogging full time, well....
Anyway, a few Fridays ago, HRH went off to Nana's to spend the night, so Scott and I were left to our own devices for the evening.  We did what other couples whose two-year-old is packed away at the grandparents' - we went car shopping.
(For the record, I want the Subaru Forester)
Driving in circles for several hours is surprisingly hungry work, so Scott suggested we make an actual date of our free evening and go to dinner.
I know - weird, huh?
Since we are, like, five seconds from Historic Downtown Chandler, we headed to Latitude Eight, a Thai restaurant that until that evening I thought held the Chik-Fil-A® Curse.
What's that?  You don't know what the Chik-Fil-A® curse is?  Well, as you may know, Chick-Fil-A® is closed on Sundays, and it seems that whenever I have a hankering for a peach milkshake, it's ALWAYS on a Sunday.  Likewise, it seems that whenever one of us thinks of going out for Thai food and suggest Latitude Eight, it's a Sunday, and they are closed, too (This same seems to also hold true for my attempts to go to Hobby Lobby, although I think Scott is really happy I rarely get to cut loose in a ginormous craft store with no chaperone).
Fortunately, it was Friday, so it was open.

And boy, was it hopping!
The restaurant holds maybe 30 people (actually, that may be high - numbers have never been my forte).  It's a small footprint, and it reminded us of several restaurants that we went to and loved in DC, including Rice, a delicious Thai restaurant not far from our U Street Green Line stop (it's also pretty close to the Red Line at DuPont).  So I kind of loved it right away (Scott had been there once for lunch, and he makes it a point not to "love" anything unless they are family members or various beers... not necessarily in that order).
We waited only a few minutes and were seated at a high top.  Then we looked at the beer list.
It was at this point that Scott decided he was in love.
With the beer list.
Most small restaurants have similar beer lists, with few variations.  Thai places will usually add Singha, which Latitude Eight does have.  But it also serves, to Scott's delight, Xingu, a Brazilian black beer that Scott discovered some years back at (shockingly) a Brazilian restaurant.  Later, when we were talking with one of the owners, he asked why it is on the menu.  Her enthusiastic response: "It goes so well with our food!"
How awesome is it that they take the care to pair their beer list with their dishes!  I love that attention to detail.  There were also several local brews available, which also warmed my heart - local supporting local.
But we were really there to eat, and by this time I was famished, so we ordered the salt and pepper squid as out appetizer.    It was outstanding - the sweet chili sauce that came with it was outstanding.  Scott told the owners that he could totally take a bottle of it home, and they told us that one of their regulars actually does that!
For our main courses Scott ordered the chicken yellow curry, the dish by which he judges all Thai restaurants.  I, on the other hand, not being the biggest fan of curry (the fact that I will try a yellow curry is still a huge step for me), had to look a bit further down the menu.
And then I saw it.
Crab fried rice.
Not Krab.  Crab.  Real, honest-to-goodness jumbo lump and king crab.
Being a Pacific Northwest girl, I didn't have to consider anything else.
Oh, it was divine.  I had imagined a bit of lump crab meat atop a mound of rice.  What I got, though, was this:

Can you hear me squeal with delight?

Big ol' hunks of the legs over a fried rice that had even more crab in every single bite.  I was in heaven.  And I ate every single bite; I couldn't let that delectable crabmeat go to waste!

Hello, gorgeous!

In fact, I enjoyed every bite to much that I was too full to order my own Thai standard - sweet sticky rice with mango.  I thought about it.  I mean really, really thought about it - I even changed the conversation from whatever it was that Scott wanted to talk about to whether or not I should order it and just take one for the team (by "team," I mean my wasitline).  But then we got to talking with David, the owner, and it slipped my mind.
That's OK - Latitude Eight is truly within walking distance now that the temps are cooling off (it was 75° today!).  I'm sure I'll be back; this is surely one of the places I'll want to recommend to any out of town guests we have (I'm talking to you, Mom).