Noodle Land in Redmond, from the inside”‘Crying Tiger,’ my wife, Laura, said, running her finger down the menu at Noodle Land in Redmond.’That is so fucking awesome,’ I replied.If I had a straight 80’s style glam-rock band, our first power ballad–track six on our very first album–would be called “Crying Tiger,” and it would be about a Kung Fu master who is sad because he has beaten all his enemies and now has nothing to do all day but sit under a peach tree and stroke his flowing mustache. If I had a van, I would have a giant Crying Tiger airbrushed onto the side, its claws out, rending the steel and weeping at its own awesomeness. If I were ever to join the Yakuza, the first thing I would do would be to get a giant crying tiger tattooed onto my back and Tora Naki (Japanese for Crying Tiger) would be my mafia name. I would become legendary as a hunter of men and a killer who always wept for the senseless loss of life every time he shot up some Shinjuku tea shop. Hollywood would make a terrible movie about it, with the part of me played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. Come to find, Crying Tiger is actually a fairly standard dish in the traditional–and semantically excellent–Thai canon. Cooked all over the world, in places where Thai people gather, live and eat, it is beef, sliced thin, dressed in a powerful shot of lime juice, then tossed with chiles, chopped onions, cilantro, mint and Thai basil–comfort food for the geographically dispossessed. It’s a poetic name for a lovely mess of a plate, heavy on the protein and endemic whenever Thai people gather to party–snapping away with chopsticks and getting right past the smell of the dish (an acidic and muddy-green reek that, at first, gave me some trouble because it is so out of joint with the flavors, melded by heat) as they dig in. It is called “Crying Tiger” because of how, when traditionally prepared (with a big-ass hunk of beef, cooked whole then sliced later), the fat weeps from the meat on the super-hot grill like the beefy tears of Jean-Claude.”From “I Am Sweet and Sour,” this week’s review of Noodle Land in RedmondNoodle Land does a lot of things well. There are admirable curries on the menu, nice little deep-fried shumai and some super-authentic Thai party food. But the thing I love about the place–the thing that actually got me through the doors of this one particular Thai restaurant (as opposed to the million other Thai restaurants dotted in and around Seattle)–is the names of the dishes.”Crying Tiger” is not so out of the ordinary around here. It’s a dish that’s become almost standard for a certain style of Thai cooking. “Swimming Rama” is the same way (though occasionally Rama is “Showering,” “Weeping” or “Sleeping”), and, like finding “Triple Delight” on a Chinese menu and knowing that it’s not something you have to pay a couple hundred extra bucks for in the alley out back, Noodle Land has plenty of Angels and Paradise. But seriously, when’s the last time you saw “Cutie Bumpers” on a menu? Or “Peekaboo Noodles?” Or one of my favorites: “I Am Sweet and Sour?”It was the language that got me through the front door at Noodle Land. But as to how I felt about the food once all those dishes started arriving? Well for that, you’re just going to have to wait until my review hits the stands and the internets tomorrow.