wat mongkolratanaram and west palm wines
LaraDiamond permalink | categories: 366, cheap, citizens, diversity, food, palm river, people, things to do, worth it, yborby LaraDiamond @ 3:49 pm
Eastern Hillsborough County keeps getting more and more interesting. Finally got myself out the Sunday Market at the Wat Mongkolratanaram Thai Temple in Palm River (5306 Palm River Road, just off 50th Street). It’s like taking a day trip to Thailand. The people are friendly, the temple is stunning and exotic and the shady grounds on the banks of the Hillsborough River are lovely.
And the food is great, plentiful and cheap. For ten bucks, you can get a fantastic array of food that feeds two or three with some left over to take home. They cook it right there and serve it fresh, and you just point to what you want. Most fun is to go with a group so you can buy a lot of different stuff and share at one of the picnic tables by the river. Among my faves were the deep-fried sweet potatoes, tarot and bananas; fresh mango; pad Thai and Thai curry dishes.
There’s also a small part of the market where they sell plants and fresh produce and a busy stage with all sorts of stuff happening, from singing to Thai Jeopardy.
Market’s from 11am-1pm, but my advice is to go early.
(check our previous review of Wat Tampa - ed.)
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On the way back to town, I hit my new favorite place to buy wine, West Palm Wines/Beaune’s Wine Bar (2009 N. 22nd St.) on the eastern edge of Ybor. It’s basically a warehouse with a cool industrial-looking lounge, a huge wine storage area, and some great deals on wine. No supermarket wines, actually no American wines, but you can get some really interesting wines for less than $10 a bottle. The owner knows his stuff but is not snobbish about it. He was just as nice to me as I rummaged through the low-price bins as he was to a millionaire who shall remain unnamed who was there at the same time spending what looked like thousands of dollars.
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June 29th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Very good folks at West Palm Wines. They’ll put a case of wine together for you for x dollars, where you fill in the x with anywhere from a budget number to whatever level you like. A very cool way to discover new wines.
Sunday market at the Thai Temple is also time well spent. If you had started off at Creperia on 7th for breakfast, you would have had the perfect day!
June 29th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Tommy, when were you at the Thai temple? I was there from 11 a.m. until nearly 2:30. What a wonderful way to spend a few hours: sampling new foods under the trees by the river, watching children perform traditional dances onstage. We sat in on some of the 1 p.m. service in the temple and I’m still mellowed out from the meditation more than six hours later.
June 29th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Whoops. Just realized this was written by Lara, not Tommy. No wonder I didn’t see Tommy at the temple. Tommy, we should meet there sometime — might be a nontraditional spot for the Tampa Bay bloggers to meet.
June 29th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Warning: The last time I ate at the temple, I was deathly ill for two or three days. A great weight loss plan, but a bit tough on the tummy. Even if you don’t eat, the temple is worth seeing and you can (respectfully) enter it on Sundays during the food market.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Actually, West Palm Wines does have American wines… but their seleciton of low-priced Italian, French and other wiens is amazing. Jim and Mark can point you in the right direciton, whatever the price range. When I’m spending more than $25-30/bottle, I want to know I’m getting a really good wine, not just a “label” that is meaningless to me.