Thai Tony's in Prospect Park and a successful defense

Well, I finally did it! Yep, now I'm a an honest to goodness PhD, though I should probably spell it Fud since that's what I mainly thought about and procrastinated with by cooking instead of writing all these 9 long years. To celebrate my successful defense I went out for amazing electronic robotic gamelan (courtesy of Taylor Kuffner), a free Deerhoof concert, and of course, Khao Soi! It was quite a night of food and musical celebration with Balinese gamelan, New Zealand savory pies from Dub Pies, Indonesian food from Java Indonesian Rijsttafel, and finally Thai food.

I've been really sad that two of my favorite nearby Indonesian restaurants, Borobudor Cafe and Soho Eastanah Indonesian, closed in the last year, leaving only 5 Indonesian restaurants I know of in NYC. Guste Bagus who ran Borobudor started a great Balinese bakery called Pinisi , that serves the excellent Ghost Chili Cupcake, made with the hottest chili pepper in the world, but there's no savory traditional Indonesian food like burbur injin (sticky coconut black rice pudding), gado gado (veggies with peanut sauce), or tempeh which the Indonesians invented. So I've been excited to try Java Indonesian for ages, and while walking there I glanced in at the Thai Tony's takeout place on 7th Ave down the block, and saw 'Kao Soi' on the menu board. After a tasty and sweet snack of achat (pickled veggies and fruit), es campur (color fruits and jelly shake), and coconut pudding and a conversation with the sweet owner there, I decided I had to stop back at Thai Tony's and get their Khao Soi to go, since I might never be in this neighborhood again before I leave NYC.

I can't tell you anything about the other food there since this was all I got, but the ambiance is nice, with the more modern feel of Pukk or Terminal Thai, and they were nice enough to give it to me directly in the glass jar I always seem to carry with me without looking at me too askance, avoiding any plastic packaging at all. This place is mainly for takeout though, with only a few bar stools up front. If you want to sit down, it might be better to go to their other branch in Kensington, though I'm not sure they serve Khao Soi as well. I have heard that the 7th Ave. Thai Tony's is undergoing renovation, but should reopen sometime in mid-December.

Not a huge amount of toppings to speak– fried noodles, raw shallots, some sprouts– but this may have been because of its to-go status. Perhaps eating there would have led to a more elaborate presentation. But the broth was nice and tangy, perhaps a bit salty, but nothing to shake a stick at for a quick bite to eat and run. I actually ate most of it enjoying the free Siren Music Festival in Coney Island RIP. I would definitely go back here if I was in the hood, definitely worth 3 stars, though relatively nearby, I think AM Thai Chili Basil in Kensington is much better.

For those of you interested in local food, tropical fruit, SE Asia and my ethnobotanical and culinary tours of Bali, I did a radio interview with KCRW's Good Food's Evan Kleinman last month about foraging for food in Central Park and foraging for fruit around the world, which you can listen to here, about 23 minutes into the show.


Thai Tony's

447 7th Ave

Brooklyn, NY‎ 11215

(718) 788-3610

Rhong is Right in Greenwich Village

Sorry I've been so incommunicado recently, but I have several good excuses: I've been showing up on New York Times videos about delicious mangosteens, replanning the trip I'm co-leading to Bali in September to taste those delicious mangosteens, finishing my Ph.D. thesis and I have my defense this Friday... and, more pertinently, I've been getting scooped by the NY Times Dining Section.

Several months ago now (wow, has it been that long since that existential experience?) I'd found Rhong Tiam on LaGuardia in the Village listed on menupages as serving Khao Soi. So when I found myself nearby with my friend Jeff after a Moth Story Slam, we checked it out. I was crossing my fingers that I could keep my good reputation as making the best restaurant recommendations to Jeff whenever he's in town, and it seems like I did with this one. We were both blown away in several ways: how good the food was, how hot the food was, and how empty the place was for how good the food was. Granted, it was a rainy Monday night at 10 PM, but still! There should be lines out the door at this place. To rectify the situation, I hurriedly reviewed it on chowound.com where my pseudonym is ephramzz, and, surprisingly, it had almost no other reviews. I couldn't imagine that I'd actually gotten to this place first of all the blogging Thai food fanatics in NYC, but apparently I had.

Then the New York Times seemed to pick up on the chowhound review in their glowing review of Rhong Tiam 3 weeks ago, since they mentioned "chowhounders" several times. I'm glad they did the review because I was worried that the restaurant wasn't crowded and needed more business, but now it's going to be too crowded for even little ol' me to get in there! Well, hopefully, they'll remember my weird questions about the ginger-relative Kra Chai in the eggplant with bamboo shoots dish and let me sit on the Vespa scooter they have sitting out front and eat off the dashboard.

You can read my review of the rest of Rhong Tiam on chowhound, but what really interests you all here is the quality of the khao soi! So let's get to it. This is one of the best, if not the best Khao soi on offer in NYC, up there with AM Thai Chili Basil and Sripraphai, but with all the yummy ingredients and toppings and more: mung beans, pickled mustard, red onion, crispy noodles, egg, baby corn, spinach, and tofu. Just missing the fried shallots I suppose, but it was so spicy and good that I paid no attention. Perhaps I was in super-endorphined state from the heat of the shredded fried catfish with green mango dish especially, but I've been back since and taken the spice a little mellower and the Khao Soi was still incredible. It is substantial, thick, creamy, flavorful, tangy, with a nice heat, pretty much all you could want from a dish of northern-Thai-yellow-curried-noodle-goodness! The waiter said it's always that spicy, that it just depends on the dish. We didn't try the "heat challenge" they offered, but felt we were heat challenged ourselves. The chef was supposedly from Chiang Mai, hence the presence of Khao Soi on their menu. Thank god for the presence of Khao soi and everything else on their menu!

I've got a few more old Khao Soi reviews up my sleeve from all this time not blogging about it (what? You think I laid off eating the stuff too? No way!), so those will be coming out soon, right after my defense. Wish me luck!

Rhong Tiam easily gets all 5 stars for its delicious Khao soi, and for every other aspect of the restaurant (other food, service, ambiance), so get there as soon as you can, but perhaps call first or go on an off night, since it will still be fairly crowded from the NY Times review.


Rhong Tiam
541 Laguardia Pl
New York‎ NY‎ 10012
between Bleecker and Houston
(212) 477-0600

No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus and Portland is not a New York neighborhood, but they do have stellar Khao Soi there

This week we're going national with a guest post from Tom out in the Pacific Northwest on a place in Portland, Pok Pok, that I've heard great things about, while I try to finish off that all important dissertation and try not to get distracted by making chocolate:

I'm a friend of Nat's from when he first started a supper club to "go eat some food on Tuesdays together" in New York City back in 2000. Along with styles such as Indian and Ethiopian, our group enjoyed Southeast Asian restaurants like Tara Thai (137 1st Ave., Manhattan), Cambodian Cuisine (87 S. Elliot Place, Brooklyn), and Tibetan Yak (7220 Roosevelt Ave., Jackson Heights). Since I moved to Bellingham, WA from Manhattan in 2003, Nat asked me to act as nonresident contributer to this blog. We both had read positive reviews of the Thai restaurant called Pok Pok, which is in southeast Portland, Oregon. So I was excited to sample the fare during a road trip (for those interested read more about my carbon offsets for the drive) to southern Oregon. I also wanted to partake in my first Khao Soi!

The Whiskey Soda Lounge portion of Pok Pok is downstairs, and there's take-out and table seating upstairs. The lounge has tight quarters, which turned out to make the meal feel more communal. Because of my fairly central location sitting in the lounge at the bar, the staff buzzed around me while I smelled and eyed the spicy tidbits near by. The wait staff and bar tender were friendly and knowledgeable about the ingredients. One waiter suggested I eat my Khao Soi using chop sticks and a large spoon, much like the variety of Japanese udon wheat-noodle soups I sometimes eat. My mild-curry brew was multifaceted, and the utensils were helpful to sift through the many layers. From the menu:
Khao Soi Kai, Northern Thai mild curry noodle soup made with our secret curry paste recipe, natural chicken on the bone and house-pressed fresh coconut milk. Served with pickled mustard greens, shallots, crispy yellow noodles and roasted chili paste. Chaing Mai specialty with Burmese origins. Vegetarian [option]

I'm sure you all know that "Kai" is a common English spelling of the Thai word for chicken. My vegetarian version contained oyster mushrooms, which were meaty and satisfying. There was fresh cilantro on the side, along with the pickled mustard greens, shallots, and roasted chili paste. I consumed all the garnishes concurrently with broth. The combination of mustard greens, tofu, oyster mushrooms, rice noodles, and crispy yellow noodles was a daring textural counterpoint, while the roasted chili paste blazed with flavor.

I also drank a glass of Thai iced tea, and a bottle of Chang beer; when I overdid a dab of chili paste, the milky tea helped extinguish the spice on my tongue. Halfway through the mixture of tastes made me feel euphoric. By the end I had feasted on the entire, sizeable bowl, but I was craving more. It's clear to me why Khao Soi is a common Thai street dish; it's an audacious and epicurean treat!

Pok Pok
3226 SE Division St
Portland, OR 97202 Get Directions
(503) 232-1387

-Tom

Thanks, Tom!

For other things Thai food related, there is a fun little video on the New York Times where I talk about my first trip to Chiang Mai and extol the virtues of my favorite fruit, the Mangosteen, which you might enjoy.

Mingala Burmese in the East Village

It wasn't till I made a post searching for new places serving Khao Soi on chowhound that I realized I'd been overlooking my favorite (only?) Burmese restaurant in New York, Mingala. Of course! I should have known that given the origins of the spices from Myanamar and the name 'khao soi' from the Burmese 'kow suer' for 'fold-pull', referring to the action of pulling the noodles integral to the dish (and not “to enter the lane” or 'big mountain' as many have attempted to interpret the name as Thai words), that this place must serve it. I'd been going to Mingala for years for their great green tea salad, made from the hard-to-find-in-NYC fermented green tea leaves. Don't let me get started on this extremely addictive dish, which I could start another whole blog on if there weren't so few Burmese restaurants in NY. I got my friends in San Francisco hooked on this dish from Burma Super Star and they would curse me as they would dream about this dish after having it and practically sleep walk to the restaurant to get it in the days before ambien and the sleep snacking epidemic. Actually you might need some sleeping aids after having the green tea salad since it packs some serious caffeine as your basically eating whole tea leaves which have more caffeine by weight than coffee beans even though when brewed coffee has more caffeine extracted. But I would advocate a nice herbal brew of catnip, hops, passion flower, valerian, chamomile, and skullcap to help fall asleep blissfully instead of pills, as long as you can wrest the catnip from your cats!

I don't know how I'd overlooked this noodle dish on Mingala's menu so long, but then when I check on the advice from chowhounder GingerSpice, yep, there it was: Swe Taung Kow Swear room temperature egg noodles, chicken cabbage, coconut milk, onion, coriander, twist of lemon and crispy noodle on top, a perfect description of Khao Soi if I'd just bothered to read it. I coaxed my friends Becca, Cassie, and Robert into going there without mentioning the Khao Soi, though it was easy since Cassie and Robert, both visiting from out of town, were recovered green tea salad addicts from SF and Burma Super Star, and I swear that whenever Robert visits NY a few times a year, he only goes to Mingala, and no other restaurants. Cassie will hopefully become my Chicago Khao soi correspondent if she can make it to the other side of the city for it.

Maybe since it was getting late and we didn't want to be kept up all night, we didn't order the green tea salad for once. Instead we ordered in addition to the Kow swear some thousand layer bread, tamin let-thoke (cold rice noodle salad), and some other tamarind thoke salad, the last two of which we couldn't tell apart at all aside from one having more rice and the other more noodles. I was bit disappointed with these other dishes this time around at Mingala, being nothing in comparison to the Rangoon night market noodles, Basil Soybean, and Mango vegetables that I usually get. I'm not sure whether it was an off night there or if it was those dishes. Both were pretty bland and needed a good amount of hot sauce to spice them up.

The Kow Swear was totally different from the Thai version I'm used to, but as this is the first Burmese version I've had of it, it's hard to know if that's just Mingala's version of it or the Burmese always prepare it like that. It had a few of the toppings I love like the fried shallots and mung beans, but lacked much curry and sourness from the lime and pickled mustard greens, again needing hot sauce to enliven the dish. Perhaps if we'd asked for some lime to squeeze over it, this would've helped, but otherwise just a novelty to order if you want to try the full gamut of Khao soi. Now I just have to find the Lao version of it. Too bad the only Lao restaurant I can find in NYC has its menu solely in Chinese, so I may just have to go hang out there all day and night till someone orders something remotely Khao-soi-looking so I can point at it!

Definitely check out Mingala for their other dishes, but don't make the Kow swear the first or only dish you order. Unfortunately, the other Upper East Side branch of Mingala does not serve the Kow Suer.


Mingala Burmese
21 E 7th St
New York‎ NY‎ 10003
(212) 529-3656
between 2nd and 3rd ave.

Udom Thai in Prospect Heights

Finally back to the matter at hand, namely coconut milky, curried, fried noodles and shalloty goodness! This is one of the few Thai restaurants serving Khai Soi that I've discovered merely by happening by and taking a glance at the menu, rather than hearing about it from a friend or finding it online. Did you know that menupages.com now lets you search for a particular dish name on menus of thousands of restaurants? This is difficult with the myriad permutations of Khao Soi's name, however, and they only cover Manhattan and part of Brooklyn. I did find two new places this way that serve it, however: Blue Chili and Rhong-Piam, now added to the map at the right. So otherwise I need all you new and old Khao soi fanatics out there helping me find these new places not listed on menupages, like Udom. I finally made the journey out to Brooklyn Heights to give Udom a try last week with my friend Becca who lives in the hood and who initially got hooked on the dish with my version of it.

Udom is a relatively standard version of the more modern, hip Thai restaurants sprouting up all over town with bright, warm colors and spiffy fixtures. I'm undecided yet as to whether this decor incarnation has any effect, bad or good, on the food. The other dish we ordered, a spicy eggplant stir-fry with basil was pretty tasty and nicely spiced, and the coconut water with chunks of coconut meat, though not taking any prep on the restaurant's part, was a nice offset to the heat of this dish and the Khao Soi.

When the dish in question arrived on our table and on our tongues, it had us divided, most likely because it was the sour, limey version which I love, vs. the musky, anisey one which I think Becca is a fan of. Granted it didn't have all the toppings and lacked a bit of depth in the curry flavor, but I know a proper amount of lime goes a long way for me as it's my natural form of MSG, making everything taste better, even the nasty ripe papaya (though I adore Som Tam, the unripe green papaya salad, more on that at the end of the review). We got the mung bean sprouts and pickled mustard greens on this one not all the crunchy fried nutttiness of the noodles and shallots. There also wasn't much of the tangy broth to speak of since it was in a shallow plate instead of a bowl, which was too bad as this makes the flavor. But they of course did not call it Khao Soi (but rather egg noodles with yellow curry or something to that effect), so I suppose I can't expect the complete dish.

Udom is definitely worth hitting if your in the hood since the nearest Khao Soi is at least a mile away in either direction at Em Thai in Carroll Gardens or Am Thai in Kensington.


Udom Thai Restaurant
661 Washington Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11238
corner of St. Marks Ave.
(718) 622-8424


Ok, so you made it this far, you must want to know more about Som Tam, or green papaya salad. Although I consider myself a fruitaholic and have tried over 200 different species of fruit, domesticated and wild, in my travels around the globe (yes, I keep a list of all these fruits, call me crazy!), there are a rare few fruits that I don't like, papaya being one of them, unfortunately. Ripe papaya just smells a little too close to ripe feet for me, if you know what I mean. It is served for breakfast so often in Bali, that when I was living there, I got used to making it palatable by smothering it in the juice from the tasty little limes they have there, and realized lime juice could make everything taste better, even the nasty papaya! I love, however, the Som Tam salad common in Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, and Cambodian food, made from shredded unripe papaya, carrots, tomatoes, peanuts, cilantro, chillis, cumin, sesame oil, fish sauce, vinegar, and palm sugar as its main ingredients. I often hunt down the green papayas in New York's Chinatown to make this dish myself, especially when I can make it vegetarian, substituting the fish sauce mentioned in this post and leaving out the dried shrimp.

So it was to my great dismay when I did my ethnobotanical fieldwork studying medicinal plants in the Peruvian Amazon with the Asháninka indigenous group where the papaya is actually native to, that I saw perhaps hundreds of papaya plants loaded with ripening fruit and not much else to eat. I tried to think of how I could divert these fruits before they wound up on the table in front of me, but I didn't want to be rude and say I didn't like them, when our hosts were being so gracious in taking care of us in the this little village of 25 people, with few other food resources besides wild game like turtles, wild turkeys, and majás, the second largest rodent in the world behind the capybara. I then remembered how much I loved green papaya salad which I hadn't seem made in Peru, so I thought I'd show them how to make it, get them hooked on it, and then all the papayas would be eaten in their green state before they reached their full ripe nastiness! And it was perfect since many of the ingredients like tomatoes, chillis, and culantro (or thorny cilantro) are native to or growing in the area.

Well, my plan worked, perhaps a little too well. The Asháninka loved the green papaya salad, but instead of making it themselves I was inundated with green papayas with someone bringing me a few from all around the village every day, asking me to make it for them. I almost didn't get my field work done due to introducing this popular Asian dish to them, but in the end I was happy I didn't have to eat that cursed ripe papaya. Any anthropologist who goes to study in this village after me is going to be quite confused as to why a South American group is making a Southeast Asian dish! That will give someone plenty of material to theorize on in their Ph.D. thesis.

Foodie Blogroll

You might notice a new link on the right for the Foodie Blog Roll. Why did I join? Because I'm definitely a foodie, I have a blog, and that's how I roll, er, I mean I've discovered many wonderful food blogs on the list, like, for instance Roopa's beautiful and delicious Raspberry Eggplant where she bakes the most delicious cakes and South Indian food, which shares many spices with Southeast Asian food and Khao Soi, the subject of this here blog. Which I'll get back to toot sweet as soon as I finish that there dissertation I'm working on and some chocolate I've been cooking up, another obsession of mine.

Two other blogs that I love on foraging for and preparing wild food , the reason I got into ethnobotany in the first place, are Feral Kevin, a kindred soul in Oakland, CA collecting acorns and mugwort in the Berkeley hills as I used to do, and Sunny Savage's Wild Food Plants blog, where she makes all kinds of deliciousness from prickly pear pie collected in Southern California, to making soup with stinging nettle, one of my favorite and most nutritious wild greens. She's going to have a TV show called 'Hot on the Trail with Sunny Savage' and will be on the Veria DISH network sometime later this year which I'm excited for! My friends Wendy and Mikey are painting their Greenacre Hotsprings eco-motel with that same prickly pear Sunny mentions instead of eating it. They're also doing some really cool stuff with growing plants in cold winter boxes under low-power but high-photosynthetically-useful LED lights.

Another food blog I've been obsessed with recently is Carmella's Sunny Raw Kitchen, as I've been eating about 3/4 raw food for the last year, though I may not have let on. I still can't live without the occasional Asian dish (as you may have noticed from this blog), and someday I may try to convert Khao Soi to a raw recipe, but in the meantime, I've been loving Carmella's inspiring collection of delicious recipes like Mediterranean flat bread, Tropical Cheesecake (exactly, with no cheese and no cake, but still delectable), and raw burgers made with Burdock, another plant you can forage for in abundance here in New York while removing an invasive weed, rather than pay the $5/lb for it at the health food store. The recipes Carmella collects are so good I can hardly get them to the plate or the table without eating them all straight out of the blender, and I feel really full of energy after eating them.

Hope this has given you some insight into what I've been cooking recently. A post on Udom Thai Restaurant in Prospect Heights coming soon!

Want to learn something new?

Slightly off the topic of Khao soi again, but related to delicious food all around the world. I just wanted to let you all know the classes I'm teaching in the spring and summer. There's these 3 listed below, in addition to the tour of the music, food, and medicinal plants of Bali I'm co-leading this summer, several edible plant walks in the NY parks I'll schedule when it gets warmer, and a possible Balinese cooking class and a psychoactive plants of the world class in Williamsburg in there's enough interest in these. If you're interested in the last two, email me at

If you want to sign up for any of the classes below, please do it soon, since they cancel the classes if there's not enough people a week before, so don't leave it for the last minute or the classes may not run, and that'd be several fewer people who know how to make delicious chocolate which is a sad thing, right?!

A Cornucopia of Fruit
Have you ever tasted the legendary mangosteen or the mysterious dragon fruit? These are just a few of the enticing exotic fruits that draw people to distant lands. But you only have to come to BBG! Discover the sweet secrets of tropical and subtropical fruits—from their healing properties to their classification to where to find rare delicacies hidden in the corners of our city. Nat Bletter will present various fruits for eating and examination.
Saturday, May 17 | 2–5 p.m.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
$34 member, $39 nonmember
(Fee includes $5 materials charge.)
Registration Information

A Cinco de Mayo Chocolate Experience
From the Mayan and Aztec use of seeds for currency and ceremonies to grand European chocolate houses, cacao has played an important role in many cultures. Ethnobotanist Nat Bletter will share the complete history of chocolate and its many current and future uses. Class includes tasting of organic and flavored delights plus preparation of Aztec Hot Chocolate with Chipotle Chiles (recipe included).
Monday, May 5 | 6–9 p.m.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
$34 member, $39 nonmember
(Fee includes $5 materials charge.)
Registration Information

Ethnobotany: Cultural Uses of Plants
Certificate Requirement (track 3),
Classroom Hours: 20
Explore how plants are a part of daily human life, from foods and clothes to medicines and the homes we live in. Study the social, historical, cultural, ecological, and economic impacts of people-plant interactions around the world. Topics are: plant classification; the major food crops; plants that produce oil, fibers, dyes, and building materials; plants as beverages, spices, and perfumes; medici- nal, poisonous, and psychoactive plants; and biotechnology, ethical issues, and field methods in ethnobotany. Demonstrations and laboratory exercises are included.
$460 non-members, $430 members
SP BOT 348 6 Mondays, May 5–June 16 (no class May 26), 6:05–9:25 p.m.,
New York Botanical Garden, Watson Building, Rm. 315
Registration info here or call 718.817.8747

Terminal Thai in the East Village

It's been a while since a posting from your friendly neighborhood Khao Soi Quester, mostly because I'm running out of places to try the dish at, unless I get reports from you, my fearless readers, of Khao Soi-serving joints in the far reaches of Gotham. Here and there I bike by a Thai restaurant and perhaps one out of 20 has some form of Khao Soi on their menu, so there's still a couple more to try. What I initially thought would only be a journey to 10 or so places that served it has now blossomed to 18. It seems to be a moving target, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and all that.

I can't remember exactly how I found Thai Terminal (formerly Roomservice Thai, with just a name change, not a change of owner), just strolling by or trolling the 'net, but I'd been there once before with the hopes of tasting their Khao, but they were "out" on a Sunday evening for some reason. I know this is a rare dish, but none of the ingredients really are, so I didn't understand exactly how they could be out, but perhaps it was the need for egg noodles. It brought me back to my visits to Thailand, where I was haunted by the phrase "mot lau" which roughly translates as "it's finished" and I heard everywhere- go to the noodle shop and they were "mot lau" of noodles, go to the sticky rice place and they were "mot lau", and sometimes I thought if I went to the water supply place they'd be "mot lau" as well! Maybe that's why Thai Terminal switched to using flat rice noodles, like those in Pad Thai, instead of egg noodles for their Khao Soi. They gave me a whole explanation of the fact that their customers didn't like really authentic spicy Khao Soi with egg noodles, so the Pad Thai noodles made it a little more accessible to the general population. I suppose that could be true, but I've never seen someone scared off a dish by egg noodles.

They described Khao soi as "Shrimp Curry Noodle- choice of rice noodle or egg noodle in thai's northern style curry broth with bean sprout, and scallion" on the menu, but of course it had rice noodles, and they were happy to make it with tofu instead of shrimp, though I doubt it's truly vegetarian given that it probably has fish sauce. The dish that arrived on our table looked and tasted pretty much like Khao Soi, though it lacked any of the toppings... any! I don't think I even saw one of the purported bean sprouts. So although the broth was thick and rich, I missed the occasional tangy bite of the pickled mustard greens or the crunch of the fried shallots or fried noodles to vary the texture. The other veggies (peppers, onions, tofu) in there were tasty and the rice noodles didn't make a big difference.

We also ordered the Chive Pancakes and Wholesome Tofu Eggplant, both of which were tasty, but low on spice. A little nam pla prik chili fish sauce took care of that though. The setting of Thai Terminal is pretty high tech, matching Pukk down the street a bit, looking more like the set of the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey than your standard New York Thai restaurant. None of it is mind blowing, but definitely tasty, and the only close place in the East Village to sample Khao Soi (check the handy new map in the right bar to find your closest place), so given the nice ambiance, the friendly service, and the generally tasty food, Thai Terminal is worth a try if you don't go on a Sunday when they are "mot lau" of Khao Soi!


Thai Terminal
349 E 12th St.
New York‎ NY‎ 10003
Between 1st and 2nd avenues
(212) 614-0155

A trip to the land of strange fruit

What is this fruit? No, it's not a giant elephant garlic that is trying to cocoon and metamorphosize into an anaconda. It's actually a salak or snake fruit from Bali. Yes, this is a little bit off topic from the Khao Soi, but still about delicious Southeast Asian food, noodles, curries, galanga, and blending of cultures. I just wanted to let people know that I will be co-leading a 10-day culinary, medicinal plant, and musical tour of Bali this July with my brilliant ethnomusicologist friend Cathy Silverman. So if you want to know how to bang out a tune with a gamelan orchestra, dance with your eyes, why fried shallots appear on top of most Balinese dishes, finish the analogy Bali is to Thailand as Sambal is to ____, or just find out how the snake fruit can look like garlic yet taste like apples dipped in peanut butter, take a look at the tour and drop us a line if you're interested. I plan to cook an introductory Balinese meal of bregedel jagung (galanga corn fritters), lawar buncis (string beans with coconut), tempeh sambal (curried fermented soy beans) and gado gado (vegetables in peanut sauce) for all the New Yorkers or even New Englanders who can make it here before we set out on the trip.

AM Thai Chili Basil in Kensington

This quest is really starting to take me to new areas of my hometown that I've never explored, an unexpected benefit of this obsession. This place in Kensington, Brooklyn on the southeast side of Prospect Park is the newest area for me as I'd been to Sripraphai's area in Queens before exploring the multitudes of diverse ethnic restaurants there and the Bronx area of Siam Square being my old high school stomping grounds. So when my friends Ellen and Charles just moved to a place down the block from AM Thai, I planned to meet them and my friend Becca for a little house-warming, or least neighborhood-warming dinner. The restaurant is in a very residential area, so we biked right by it the first time without noticing it as it looked nothing like I expected. The place is mostly just for take out with two tiny tables that they had to clear off of stacked plates to sit at. There is zero ambiance here with fluorescent lights and seats as an after thought, but that made it feel all the more like an authentic Bangkok night market stall because the food was excellent all around. So don't come here for the mood, or just get the food to go and set the right mood at home since this food is not be missed.

I tasted a good range of the dishes even though at first everyone was tempted to just order their own plate of Khao Soi, having had it with me before and knowing the dish's potential greatness, but I dissuaded them and promised to liberally share what I ordered if they would do the same. Charles' Tom Kha Gai (coconut milk soup) might have been the best rendition of this dish I've had in New York, with a sharp spiciness of the chili oil, smoothness from the coconut milk, and the pungency of the lemongrass and galanga (a root related to ginger that has the anti-depressant monoamine oxidase inhibitor in it, the most common antidepressant before SSRI's like Prozac were introduced. This is why I think people always like this dish so much– it makes you happy!). His mock duck with basil was tasty as well and Ellen's spicy fried fish had a delicious kickin' sauce covering it. This was all in addition to the Khao Soi which turned out to be up there with the best I've had in New York.

The bowls of Khao Soi (I didn't convince everyone to order something different) arrived with everything on top already, so we missed out on the fun of tuning it up ourselves, but this wasn't so bad as almost all the toppings were there save fried shallots, and it tasted so exquisite, with a nice mound of fried noodles on top, mung bean sprouts, pickled mustard greens, red onions, a very smooth, spicy, and sour broth, and yummy chunks of fried tofu. Actually, one strange twist was that this version had no soft noodles in the broth, just the large golden brown dollop on top, but these weren't missed because the broth was so substantial and you could just submerge the fried noodles in the liquid long enough to get them to your particular desired level of softness. I've seen it done once before like this at Em Thai, also in Brooklyn, so maybe it's just a local Brooklyn variant of Khao Soi. I was tempted to slurp down every last bit of the curry but remembered my promise to share and had gotten filled up on all the other tasty food.

The chef kept coming over and asking us if we'd been to Thailand, I guess because we'd ordered such obscure dishes rather than the standard Pad Thai and seemed to be taking the heat of the food without too much of a profusion of perspiration on our brows. She said she was from Bangkok but had picked up the idea of making the dish from "that Thai place in Queens" a.k.a. Sripraphai and recreated it on her own. I never knew Thai chefs did industrial espionage like this, but in this case I'm really glad she did!

So get yourself to Kensington right quick and try some of this Khao Soi that stands up to trendy places that charge twice the price for this dish. A good day for Khao Soi all around, though not in other aspects of my buggin' life. Maybe I just need to eat more of that galanga to get through the darkness of winter!

AM Thai Chili Basil
359 Mcdonald Ave.
Brooklyn,‎ NY‎ 11218
(718) 871-9115
Church Avenue on the F. Get out the back, Ablemarle exit, it's right there.