Pad Thai Is Only Easy In Theory

I have a long standing obsession with pad thai so whenever I go to a new Thai place, I always order their shrimp pad thai.  Over the years I have eaten very good pad thai (Song and Joya in New York) and very bad pad thai (too numerous to mention).  So when I found what looked to be a super authentic pad thai recipe on userealbutter, I just had to try it.  So the good thing about the recipe is the technique is solid.  My first attempt was sort of a disaster, but after I switched to a large enough pot and got the hang of timing everything, it's a breeze to make up.  The problem is it doesn't really taste like the pad thai I like!  I'm not entirely sure what's missing.  More fish sauce?  More sugar?  I found another version from Cook's Illustrated so I will be giving that a go one of these days.  The elements I will definitely be keeping from this recipe though, is to have a batch of sauce made up in advance and to cook small servings at a time.  Makes a huge difference.  What I would change is the egg.  When I tried to cook the egg in the same pan with the noodles, it never turned out well (maybe because my pan is not non-stick), so I have much better results when I cook up the egg in a separate pan, cut it into pieces and then sort of add it with everything else in the end.

You can find the recipe and tutorial here.