Elephant Jumps, web site, Thai food in Merrifield, 8110 A Arlington Blvd, Falls Church, VA, 22042, 703-942-6600, in the Yorktowne Center, more on Gallows than Route 50. (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [Don Rockwell | Yelp]
Update June 30, 2013: This place is is getting better and better, new review here.
Home-style Thai food, with four levels of spicy, culminating in “Thai spicy.” It’s not as good as Thai X-ing, but it’s probably better than any other local Thai competitor. They will watch you sweat and they will giggle.
Here is one good review of the restaurant. Here is a short bit on how elephants were viewed in antiquity. Here is my favorite book on elephants.
After we exchanged impressions of the other local Thai restaurants, the proprietor said to me: “You know a lot about food and you get around — you should be a food critic. You could write up what you think about all these places!”
If we’re not going to have much more economic growth, we can at least have a few locales like this.
I was just looking to see if the restaurant is still there, since my friends there went last year (and loved it) and I will also be in the area next week. Your blog came up, good that it did, I loved the video:)
We ate at Elephant Jumps Saturday night, when the restaurant had a modest crowd, some empty table, and several screming toddlers. As we were being gluten free that evening, a surprisingly large part of the menu seemed off limit. A menu insert included excerpts from various reviews, including Tyler’s List!
We would have tried the fried papaya salad, but it didn’t pass the gluten test. Same for the scallops with crispy basil. The regular papaya salad was tasty, not overly spiced (we took it as it came and did not seek spice adjustment), and smaller than you find in most Thai restaurants. We also had the charbroiled marinated pork, which was tasty and not too spicy. Just so you”ll know, my wife tolerates only mildly spicy food, and I like very spicy. My wife liked the spice level, and something is better than nothing as far as I am concerned on this front.
Entrees were drunken noodles and a ginger saute. The noodles were good and the portion was large. The ginger was smaller, with seven tasty shrimp. We had mango sticky rice for dessert, which was very well made.
The service was excellent, with a very helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable waiter. We though the prices to be quite reasonable.
We are already planning a repeat visit in the near future.