Thai Cuisines
Thai-Style Soft Shell Crab Salad
Soft shell crabs are one of those items we can’t help but order when we’re eating out, but rarely consider actually preparing at home. But as long as you let your fishmonger do the cleaning, believe it or not, they’re a total cinch to cook…
Read More
Lucky Bee is Really Cooking With Gas
The Lower East Side’s Lucky Bee is really cooking with gas; and we mean that literally. After launching three months ago, and operating solely with induction and butane stoves, the family style, farm-to-table Southeast Asian spot (from philanthropist and sneaker designer, Rupert Noffs and his husband and former Fat Radish chef, Matty Bennett) finally has access to a gas-powered cooktop, oven and grill.
Read More
Truly Innovative Thai Food at Ngam
Thai restaurants tend to fall into two camps — there’s highly Americanized spots, and resolvedly authentic eateries, featuring searingly spicy chili peppers and potentially challenging proteins. But Ngam in the East Village takes a playful and tasty approach, injecting complex, regional Thai dishes with a bit of American cheek…
Read More
Authentic Isan Eats at Larb Ubol
Cheap Thai restaurants are pretty much a dime a dozen in New York — you know, the kind that serves plates of sweet, limp Drunken Noodles and wan saucers of Red, Yellow or Green Curry, each utterly indistinguishable from the next. And the dim stretch of 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen has more than its share, which makes it difficult to pick out diamonds in the rough like Larb Ubol…
Read More
Q & A with Pok Pok Ny’s Andy Ricker
New York is having a love affair with Asian cooking, and Andy Ricker’s three terrific Thai eateries are among the most respected restaurants of all. There’s the flagship Pok Pok Ny in Brooklyn, modeled after his original outpost in Portland. There’s the recently opened Whiskey Soda Lounge just next door, which showcases delicious drinking food alongside cocktails made with Ricker’s own Som Drinking Vinegars. And there’s Pok Pok Phat Thai on the Lower East Side (formerly Pok Pok Wing), which focuses on highly authentic renditions of the popular, but too often bastardized dish.
Read More
Silom Village
If you want to sample the scope of fresh seafood available in Bangkok, Silom Village is a great place to do that. This outdoor eatery, set smack in the middle of a shopping village, is composed of original Thai teak houses, so you’ll get a bit of culture and food in one. And at night, there’s live music and Thai dancing to accompany your meal, so you might want to visit at dinnertime. Consider yourself forewarned: There’s no air conditioning, so be prepared to sweat a bit. Seeing as spicy food cools down the body’s temperature, you’ll want to start with the Hot & Spicy Shrimp Soup better known as Tom Yum Koong. Silom Village’s rendition of this classic dish is particularly spicy, so order a Singha beer to chase it down (Thai beer always pairs best with...
Read More
Restaurant Openings to Look Forward to in 2013
For food writers, each year generally ends with a flurry of restaurant “Best Of” listicles, chronicling the highs and lows of eateries both old and new. But as soon as the calendar reads January 2nd, we hit the reset button, turning our attention towards a brand new crop of impending openings. From Michael White’s eagerly anticipated double header in Manhattan (The Butterfly and Ristorante Morini), to Andy Ricker’s continued expansion of his Pok Pok empire in Brooklyn (Whiskey Soda Lounge), it’s already shaping up to be a banner year for the New York restaurant scene. And who knows? A few of them just might make our “Best Of” lists at the close of 2013.
Read More
Thip Samai
If you love Pad Thai, Thip Samai is your Graceland. This is Shrimp Pad Thai the way it was meant to be eaten — incredibly light and flavorful with Thai’s signature hints of salty, sour, spicy, and sweet. It’s a gorgeous tangle of springy, yet soft noodles, mingled with achingly fresh shrimp, shrimp roe, sweet egg, sprouts, peanuts, scallions, and tossed with dried red chile peppers, fish sauce, palm sugar, and vinegar. Which is why it’s perpetually packed with young people, scarfing down plates of the stuff. But did you know that pad thai isn’t really pad thai at all? It’s true. The dish first came to Thailand by way of Vietnamese traders and it didn’t really become popular in Thailand until the 1930’s when the prime minister encouraged the production of rice noodles, even going so far...
Read More
Or Tor Kor Market
Talk about a crash course in Thai cuisine. This lively Bangkok market is a veritable Disneyland for traditional Thai dishes and ingredients. Thai mangoes, coconuts, longan fruit, jackfruit, dragonfruit, durian and countless species of bananas, mangosteen (my favorite), lychee, custard apples, rambutan and oodles more! Ever tasted sapodilla fruit? I hadn’t either until I visited Bangkok, but I long for it daily now that I’m back in the states, so make the most of all the exotic fruits you’ll see and smell in Thailand. Reminiscent of a mango in shape with a light brown skin, sapodilla is divinely soft and fragrant with a flavor that evokes honey and caramel. And don’t listen to what people say about stinky durian. You may not care to eat it raw (it’s indeed stinky), but cooked and used to make a dessert...
Read More
Krua Apsorn
There isn’t much in the way of fine dining in Bangkok, at least not where Thai people go to splurge or celebrate a special occasion. The fancier restaurants are for tourists or expats, most often found at hotels. But there is traditional and celebrated cooking, and one of the most celebrated is Krua Apsorn (there’s two ouptosts). Everyone who’s anyone seems to have eaten at Krua Apsorn, including the Thai Royal Family, who frequent the eatery often. Still, the decor is minimal, but clean and the waitstaff attentive. (And the bathroom is entirely usable!) We settled into a table next to the window, looking out over the bustling Bangkok streets, watching motor bikes and tuks-tuks whiz by while we reveled in an ice cold Singha served up in a frozen mug and air conditioning, which is hard to come...
Read More
Raan Jay Fai
Don’t go to the bathroom at Jay Fai (that’s what the locals this joint), located in the Old City. Go to the bathroom before you leave your hotel or after dinner. (It’s too gross for words.) But definitely go to Jay Fai! It was by far my favorite meal in not just Bangkok, but all of Thailand. And I ate everywhere. I ate on the streets and fancy hotels, in formal restaurants and in dives. I’m still thinking about the incredible Crab Omelet (Kai-jeaw poo) I ate there. The egg itself was fluffy and sweet, subtly flavored with fish sauce, and studded with not strands or even shreds of crab, but huge hunks of sweet crabmeat. The perfect complement, as you quickly learn in Thailand, to any omelet is a sweet chile sauce that you’ll want to pour on just...
Read More
Pok Pok Ny
Andy Ricker’s Portland, Oregon import made waves when it first landed on an unassuming block in Brooklyn’s out-of-the-way Columbia Waterfront District last summer. Locals, intrepid Manhattanites, food media and more all reported lines that stretched down the cobblestone streets, where only the most determined lasted the two hours it took to finally cram into a tiny table and feast on Ricker’s faithfully rendered regional Thai specialities. You may not have to wait (quite) as long for your Hoi Thawt (broken crepe with mussels), Laap Meuang (minced pork salad), or Kung Op Wun Sen (prawns baked in a clay pot) nowadays, but that only helps legitimize the uncontrived everyman vibe Pok Pok is going...
Read More
Kin Shop
Harold Dieterle isn’t afraid of a little (or a lot…) spice at Kin Shop, his modern Thai restaurant in the West Village. He turns up the heat in many of the dishes on the menu, including his Braised Skate and Calamari Curry with Pickled Green Peppercorns and Northern Thai Style Curry Noodle. But one of the hottest dishes on the menu is the Spicy Duck Laab Salad.
Read More
Sripraphai
If you’re looking for a good excuse to visit Queens this weekend, SriPraPhai Thai Restaurant is reason enough. Ask any New Yorker where you can get some decent Thai food, and if they know what they’re talking about, they’ll point you here.
Read More
Ayada Thai
The second Thai restaurant (the other is Sripraphai) to make our duck list also happens to be in Woodside, Queens, where there’s a thriving immigrant community. Like the food at Sripraphai, Ayada Thai’s dishes are as authentic as they are inexpensive. If you love spice sans the sweetness that often comes with Thai cooking (in America), this will be your happy place. This quaint eatery, outfitted with photos of the Thai royal family, is like something out of Bangkok. The menu’s admittedly pork-heavy menu, but there’s also a terrific, crispy duck salad, made with lean, juicy strands of duck, pineapple, cashew in a chili sauce. Not to mention the Panang Curry, a luscious coconut milk curry with the same delicious, duck...
Read More
New York’s Best Thai Restaurants
With tens of thousands of restaurants in New York, it’s tough deciding where to eat , nevermind what genre of cooking. We’ve got Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Cuban, even British, Burmese and Cambodian these days, but when we want to experience vibrant, layer upon layer of flavors, we head for Thai food. This Southeast Asian cuisine is simultaneously salty, sweet, spicy, and sour, and rich with texture of the crunchy, unripe mango, papaya or roasted peanut sorts. A decade ago, there weren’t many places to get a decent panang curry, let alone duck larb, in the five boroughs. Thankfully, there was always Sripraphai, a twenty-year old temple of Thai cuisine in Queens, but places like that were few and far between. Suddenly, Thai is the cuisine du jour, with new spots opening up all year and old one finally...
Read MoreThai Select
Address: 472 9th Ave., at 36th Street Phone: 212-695-9920 Cuisine: Modern Thai Vibe: Buddhist-Zen Hours: Sun-Thu: 11:30am-11pm, Fri-Sat: 11:30am-12am First Bite Impressions: Unexpected delight Note to Self: Order the mojito Don’t Miss Dish: Tamarind Duck- Crispy duck served with smoked tamarind soy sauce over a bed of baby bok choy Price: Appetizers, $5-10; Entrees, $9-18. Reservations: Reservations recommended. A diamond in the rough you might say, at 36th Street & 9th Avenue there lives a quaint and nondescript new Thai restaurant that is anything but mundane Woks abound with jumbo shrimp – plump & delicious – glass noodle pad thai’s and the duck I dare contend is as crispy on the outside & juicy on the inside as any you’ll find in Chinatown. Pad Thai spring rolls are double-rolled for an extra crunchy effect and even gimmicky pork poppers with...
Read More