Suporn's Thai Restaurant

With all the competition for dining on the cheap in Wheaton, a restaurant’s got to be both good and consistent, and this Thai eatery, a highlight of the scene only a few years ago, is slipping. The fading, drab decor could be forgiven if not for the lackluster state of the cooking. The lush harmony of sour, sweet, salty, and bitter that good Thai aims to deliver is here reduced to a monotone—dishes are frequently hot or sweet, but rarely both, and seldom anything else. Curries are surprisingly thin and watery, conveying a simple, one-note heat without a compensating complexity of flavor, and the fried stuff is frequently heavy and greasy. If you’re looking for a vivifying brightness, look to the array of salads, although that brightness is come by simply and unsubtly, through a too-pungent sour marinade. Even the sticky rice with mango—a sure thing at most Thai places—lacks the salty bite to play against the natural sweetness of the rice, which, in this version, is a lot more gluey than it ought to be.
—Todd Kliman, July 20, 2004