the best of the thai-o-rama best

so if you have been following my blog or this thai-o-rama project than you know there was a lot of not great thai food eaten in the last year.  all a long you may have been thinking, "i don't care about hearing about bad thai food, just tell me where the good stuff is."  so this is where the pay off of eating all that not great thai food happens.  i can, with authority, tell you where you should spend your money on thai eats, and where you should not.
all of the bloggers are all using the same categories below to rate the restaurants:

Best pad thai: i actually don't order pad thai that frequently.  i thinks its kind of a wimpy thai dish, like ordering california rolls at sushi.  but sometimes i do crave it and reading back over my reviews it seems that vientiane had a great rendition.

Best curry: curry is the opposite of pad thai for me, i like to order it every time i go for thai, and i especially love to get it with duck.  the green tofu curry at chiang-mai two was excellent, though one needs to be aware of their heat rating. sabieng thai also had a good panaeng tofu curry.  with these two endorsements i think it may actually be tofu i like to order in my curry

Best spring rolls:  i think that spring rolls across the board are pretty mediocre so i can't recommend any places rolls over another.  but since seth's go-to thai appetizer is crab rangoon i will tell you that hands down the best version of this is at chiang-mai two.  you can actually taste crab in this version.

Best soup: we only ordered soup at 2 or 3 spots so i am gonna decline to comment here.

Best atmosphere: boda is the only interesting restaurant space of any of the restaurants we dined at.  but remember, if you like bus stations, vientiane is the place for you.

Best overall: i'm gonna do a top 3, in no special order -- pom's thai taste, chiang-mai two, and boda.  i'm not totally on the boda band wagon, and i didn't like everything we ordered.  but with some much of exactly the same thai food, its fun and exciting to dine on something different.  honestly i would put it in the top category alone for the dessert of sticky rice, coconut milk and mango.  it was a total surprise that chiang-mai two was so good.  it has a very traditional menu but everything we ordered was the best version we had in 13 restaurants.  pom's thai taste is a great stand by with a huge menu and is super approachable for those new to thai food.  i also think that veranda thai and sabieng thai do a good job.

Best prices: i think this really should be best value for the money.  again i think chiang-mai two had excellent food and reasonable prices.  vientiane also had very good food at pretty much dirt cheap prices.

Best "I never expected to like it" dish:  i have mixed feelings about crab rangoon and i usually just allow seth to order it.  so i guess my 'never expected to like it dish' was the crab rangoon at chiang-mai two.
Place I would never go back to (my own catagory): so while there was a lot of mediorce thai, most places were not horrible, just nothing special.  i think that if they are your neighborhood thai restaurant than you can get a decent americanized-thai meal there.  the one restaurant that i would never recommend anyone is viet bangkok cuisine.  i actually gave this place a okay review when we dined there but it was only our second restaurant and i was not yet jaded by just okay food.  and, in fact, this place's food is not okay.  i can still taste that weird plasticy taste that flavored our curry.