Living in Boston, we get a lot of food menus in the mail, usually from new restaurants or old places we’ve never heard of before. Pizza, Chinese, and Thai food dominate the menus, but are any of these places really worth trying? In this ongoing series, we’ll pull a menu from our stack and review our meal honestly — delivery or take-out only!

We weren’t feeling like pizza, but Thai is a totally different story. We both love Thai food like nobody’s business, and Tom Yum Koong I in Medford stuffed the ballot box by sending us not one but two menus in the mail. Their ploy worked this evening!

We checked tomyumkoong.net and found it extremely easy to order: the “Order Online” button links to the secure eat24.com website, where we ordered an appetizer of fresh Spring Rolls, Avocado Curry with tofu (hot), and Drunken Noodle (medium). After we placed the order, we suddenly remembered to change the chicken in the drunken noodle to pork. Behold the marvels of modern technology! Using eat24.com’s live chat service, we put in our request to a customer service rep, he called the restaurant, and then literally a minute later we got a direct call from the restaurant confirming the change. Talk about living in a world of instant gratification! The website promised delivery in 45-60 minutes, but it arrived in 30! These fresh rolls had lettuce, shrimp, and marinated tofu wrapped in steamed rice sheets—quite heavy on the lettuce, but very tasty when dipped in the peanut-teriyaki sauce:

The avocado curry was advertised as “most popular,” and the heat was redolent after a few bites. Even though the avocado was a bit overripe (notice the dark spots), the curry sauce had coconut milk in it to temper the heat, and the veggies were cooked to an ideal marriage of softness and crunch. And the very generous tofu was spongy with the soaked-in curry juices and the ideal amount of chewiness:

And we always order a noodle dish. For years, our standard order was Pad See Ewe with the flat noodles, until we embraced the traditional Pad Thai. Now we’re gleefully stuck on Drunken Noodles for the sinus-clearing rush, and this entry certainly brought the heat: stir-fried flat noodles with pork, eggs and veggies in a spicy basil sauce:

The verdict: except for the lettuce-heavy fresh rolls (skip those in favor of other items we’d like to try…maybe the Thai rolls or steamed gyoza), this was solidly great delivery food that we’d order again—though we’d order everything “hot” next time.  The service was extremely prompt, and the bill was under $30. Tom Yum Koong I is located at 11 Forest Street in Medford, MA.