The Quest for Khao Soi

Yourthai Rice & Noodle Bar in Melbourne, Australia

2010-09-15T05:32:00.000-07:00

I'm on the move again with a touch down in Melbourne for a wedding with Abby, so of course we went in search of Khao soi and didn't have to go far (3 blocks from our hotel in the Central Business District) to find this fast foodish sit down Thai noodle bar.

They had quite passable Tod Mun Plaa (my all-time favorite street food in Thailand– fish cakes with kaffir lime leaves) but a bit overly processed and low on the all important kaffir lime leaves. Their Khao soi had plenty of vegetables– eggplant, mushrooms, cabbage, broccoli, baby corn, sprouts, mint, basil, and curry leaf, the latter a quite unique addition– and fried and thin egg noodles but no pickled mustard, lime, or fresh shallots to top it off and adjust taste. Broth was thick on coconut milk, not sour enough (with no supplementary lime to adjust it!), and still a bit watery despite an overpowering indian curry powder taste. Curry leaves, a pungent resinous leaf from India closely related to citrus that actually has little relation to the word "Curry" for a spice mixture even though they often appear in curries, were also a strange addition which I've never seen, but nice to find fresh in downtown Melbourne. The extra veggies were nice for me as a vegaquarian, but they should not come at the expense of the toppings that define this dish! Jack fruit smoothie was also tasty and a nice find, though definitely from canned jack fruit, not the delicate fresh fruit that inspired the tasty of juicy fruit gum.

Admittedly, we may be being extra critical about Yourthai since we had just come from the Mecca of Khao Soi, Chiang Mai, a few days before, so if your stuck in central Melbourne with a hunger for Khao soi, this might be worth a short visit, but not solely for the Khao soi, and if anyone know of any other good khao soi spots in Melbourne, please let me know for our next visit down under! All the other food in Melbourne was excellent, so there's got to be something else out there. Look for my reviews of the chocolate shops in Melbourne on my other blog, Chocolate from the Source, soon!

Yourthai Rice & Noodle Bar

255 Swanston StMelbourne VIC 3000Australia+61 3 9663 8010

tummyrumbles.com

Portland II: the Khao Soi Strikes Back

2010-09-10T02:09:00.000-07:00

Another kind guest post from my friend Adam to compensate for my post slackingness from having an actual job (or 2) these days. I've also started another blog, Chocolate from the Source, on my chocolate explorations, bean-to-bar making, and the chocolate company I'm starting which seems to be taking time away from my khao soi hobby. :( But never fear, Adam is here to save the day! And he's being modest as we went to Sripraphai in Queens a couple of months ago and he was keeping up with the fast and furious pace of 13 esoteric dishes I ordered and he remembered the Thai phrases I taught him, so I trust him and his wife to know a great Khao soi when they see it!

Hello fellow khao soi seekers. I've been invited to guest blog today to spread the word about a place I discovered in Portland, OR. First, my credentials: I may not be as hard-core as some around here, but I know a good khao soi when I see one. I've done Chiang Mai, I've done Rhong Tiam in NYC (before they moved and screwed up the food), and I've done Sripraphai in Queens.

We were randomly wandering around Portland on a road trip from British Columbia to Burning Man. The guy at Powell's books (the disneyland of bookstores, if disneyland wasn't soulless and commercial) pointed us to a row of lunch carts nearby for a meal. One of them turned out to be a hidden gem -- Somtum Gai Yang. Somtum, as I knew, is green papaya salad -- my other favorite thai dish. Gai yang, Nat tells me, means grilled chicken. Didn't have a chance to explore what they had to offer in that department.

We ordered the khao soi, somtum, sticky rice, and an iced tea. Everything was perfect. The Somtum was perfectly balanced between sweet, sour, spicy, and salty, and the papaya was just the right crunch, but just soft enough to chew without chomping. Sticky rice was done right. And the main event, the khao soi, was remarkable. Creamy but not oily, spicy and flavorful, crunchy and sloppy. Plenty of pickled greens (I moonlight as a pickle fanatic). My wife Anya and I were fighting over the spoon.

Spice: Anya has a palate of steel so believe me when I say that this joint was not kidding around. She was high as a kite for a good half hour after lunch. And these guys know the secret to making food super spicy in that subtle way that enhances the flavors rather than blowing everything away.

Ambiance: this is a lunch cart. Still, it's adorable, built to look like a little red caravan wagon. There are a few tiny tables on the sidewalk that you can grab if you're lucky or very intimidating. We shared a table with an interesting character, a veteran of the organics-vs-large-agribusiness wars who was stranded in Portland for a few hours. He was no stranger to khao soi either -- in fact I heard him thank the chef in Thai as he left.

Not bad for a little lunch cart on the street. Rock on, Portland.

Somtum Gai Yang

Lunchcart row: SW 10th St. and SW Alder

Portland, OR 97205

Southwest Portland
(503) 522-9543

A Pilgrimage to the Mecca of Khao Soi: Chiang Mai, Northwest Thailand

2009-11-17T17:14:00.000-08:00

I just came back from 5 weeks of field work in Thailand and Lao studying my favorite subject, food! It was glorious and at times a deranged existential hell to be force fed my favorite food in all the world, non-stop, all day, till I felt like I'd explode from the Khao Soi baby growing in my stomach. The Thais sure know how to eat! It seems they're either talking about where or what to eat, preparing food, in the middle of eating, or talking about how full and satisfied they are. I would be too if I got to eat this food every day. I just have to learn not to finish my plate each time.

There is no way I can visit Thailand and not make a trip to the Mecca of Khao Soi, Chiang Mai, in Northeast Thailand, near the infamous "Golden Triangle" of Thailand, Mynamar (a.k.a. Burma), and Lao, though for my purposes this golden triangle represents the epicenter of Khao Soi since it originated either from Mynamar or Yunnan, China, and is made quite well in all three countries of the Golden Triangle. Chiang Mai is a beautiful city with the old wall surrounded by a mote, beautiful crafts, several luxurious botanical gardens, kind people, and some of the best food in Southeast Asia. In addition to Khao Soi, they specialize in Yum Som-o, a tasty tangy salad of pomelo (or shaddock, one of the ancestors of grapefruit, minus the bitterness), which is made in nearly every corner food stand. Because of this convergence of several cultures, it seems they have perfected Khao Soi here, even if they did not invent it.

So for you, my faithful readers, I sacrificed the integrity of my stomach wall, risked explosion, and sometimes my sanity, and tried 8 different Khao Sois in only 3 days, often having it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! It was a scrumptious and heady few days I would gladly repeat in a second. Thank you so much to my gracious host Lisa for putting me up, scouting out so many great khao soi spots, and showing that you can go from ancient royal Thai food to break dancing in only a few hours in Chiang Mai. Hopefully she'll be doing some guest posts from the field filling in the myriad spots I didn't get to hit in my short time there.

Check this great video from Open Chiang Mai on 3 khao soi spots in Chiang Mai I mention. I'm honored that they mention me on their blog for reference. There's also a new mappy mashup thang over there on the right specifically for Chiang Mai. I also review 2 places in Bangkok, one not even serving Khao Soi, but quite worthy of a mention. For reference, 30 Baht (B or ฿) is about $1 when I wrote this post.

Just khao soi
0-5381-8641 108/2 Thanon Charoen Prathet Despite the name and the focus, this place is all ambiance and little attention to strong good flavors. When order you can choose the spice level, round or flat noodle, 6 different meats or vegetarian, Lanaa (no coconut milk) or "classic Chiang Mai" (coconut milk already added but still too low). I ordered a spicy, flat noodle, vegetarian, classic. Served on palate with many toppings: pickled mustard greens, sugar, fish sauce, extra coconut milk, chili oil, lime, fresh scallions, and one of the more novel toppings I've seen, banana slices to kill the spiciness at the end. Even though I asked for it spicy, it was way too mild. They didn't trust I wanted it actually hot which shows they're probably used to farang (thai for "foreigner") with delicate palates. Watered down farang khao soi. Beautiful surroundings but too much flare. Franchising if interested.
99 B med 150 B large.

Lam Duan khao soi
Charoen rat road south of Wat Fa Ham
Simple but excellent. Owner knew immediately we wanted khao soi. Made vegetarian no problem, though it helps to say "pom kin jeh" in Thai. The bowl of great smelling Khao soi that appeared quickly had a rich oily broth that was not very coconuty but still quite rich and good flat rice noodles. Toppings included were crisp noodles, lime, pickled mustard, and fresh shallots. There is zero ambiance here- plastic stools and table cloth but that puts all the focus on good food as it should be. People come for khao soi and satay. 60 B or 30 B, depending on the size.

Khao soi Fa Ham
Charoen rat road across from temple Wat Fa Ham.
They only serve a buffet with khao soi included but they were nice and gave us a 24 B single khao soi. Nicer open air ambience with wood tables & chairs. Thicker richer spicier broth but less flavor. Same simple toppings as above: crisp noodles, lime, pickled mustard, and fresh shallots. Hibiscus ice tea naan krajiab drink had salt but was tasty and refreshing. They also had us try chaploo tod, deep fried chaploo leaves (a relative of black pepper and betel leaves which have a very peppery smell and taste) sprinkled with sesame seeds, wish I could have those back here in Hawaii to go with my homemade khao soi!

Khao Soi Smir Jai
Charoen rat road north of temple Wat Fa Ham
Same basic toppings: crisp noodles, lime, pickled mustard, and fresh shallots. It had shorter fried noodles but much more of them. Spring onions were incorporated into the broth which was less spicy but with sweeter and deeper cumin & coriander spice notes. Many of the noodles stuck together, which is a good sign they are home made. Guava (called "farang" like foreigners, showing the fruit's foreign origin in the Amazon) and lime drinks were refreshing as well. This place is really a local fave as it was packed to the gills.

Bao Bao Vegetarian
Chiang Mai Lamphun Road and Ratuthit Rd.
This was Lisa's nice discovery. Their serving had light crispy fried noodles and the toppings were simpe lime, pickled mustard, and cilantro. I was happy that I could get a vegetarian version with some extras in it like veg "fish" ball and fake duck. The light refreshing broth had star anise and was thin but flavorful. Perfect for vegetarians.

Tops market Khao soi stand.
Kad Suan Kaew "Central" mall, Huay Kaew rd.
Great selection of toppings with scallions, lemon basil, cilantro, roasted chili paste, whole chilis, sprouts, lemon grass, cilantro, sugar, fish sauce. Broth a bit thin could have used more coconut milk. Needed a fair bit of spicing up. Even with all those toppings. Nice surroundings since you can get many other local foods like khao niao mamuang (sticky rice with mango), dried bananas (the nice soft ones, not the boring dry chips we get in the states), yum som-o (spicy pomelo salad), som tam (green papaya salad), and delicious iced drinks of marmalade fruit (nam matum), lemongrass (nam takrai), hibisicus (nam krajiap), and lime (nam manao).

Kao soi Islam
Thanon Charoen Prathet 1, Near night market road
Nice coconuty broth with red chili oil tints but a bit low on spices. Round soft and fried noodles that taste a bit like lomein noodles and their pickled mustard is sweet, which is strange but interesting. Standard basic toppings- fresh shallots, scallions, pickled mustard, and lime plus sauces standardly at table which give you quite a variety: dried hot chili, siracha sauce, nam pla prik (chili and fish sauce), and nam prik som (vinegar chili sauce). Definitely a deviation from the norm and a bit hard to get used to but tasty. 60 Baht.

Raan Pic ohn
Around Wat Pan On off of Rachadamnoen Rd.
A tasty and very fruity broth with a novel flavor and great toppings that included fried shallots (my favorite and the only place I saw them with Khao soi in Chiang Mai). Light refreshing broth low on coconut but high on flavor. A divine combo of profane and profound- Khao soi and delicious Tod mun pla (kaffir lime leaf fish cakes) in styrofoam bowls in front of a gold temple. The fish cakes quickly became my favorite walking street food in Thailand with their spicy herbiness offset by the sweet, refreshing taste of the vinegar chili sauce.

S&P
Soi Sukhimvit 49, Bangkok, near Asok Skytrain station Almost like the Denny's of Thailand with the placemats touting whole lobsters, Hawaiian ice cream sundaes, and New Zealand oysters. Very clean, with a bakery attached, and a freezer full of many items on the menu to take home and nuke yourself dinner.
Khao soi had fried noodles, pickled mustard, fresh shallots, lime, and chili oil to top it with. No veggies or anything but stock and noodles (and chicken if you want it), but the broth was quite flavorful and rich. Perhaps a little bit salty or MSG-y, but I finished the whole bowl down to the last drop. If I was stranded in Bangkok with no Khao Soi, I'd be happy to go to this place since there supposedly many locations around town, though it's hard to figure out exactly where from their website, possibly because it's all in Thai.

Chote Chitr
โชติจิตร
146 Prang Pu Thorn off Thanon Tanao 1 block north of Banting muang, near Kao San Rd, Bangkok, far from Skytrain or metro
Great smoky banana blossom salad (yum hua plee), roast green eggplant salad (yum ma khuea), spicy sweet orange curry with snakehead fish and vegetables including wing beans and daikon (gaeng som plaa chawn pak). Hard to find but keep asking and you'll find it. Cab drivers don't know alley and might keep pointing you towards Kao San rd, the backpacker ghetto, one block north. The green grilled eggplant had a delectable smokiness that cut through the sourness of the sauce and contrasted the saltiness of the large prawns, small shrimp, and chicken. The orang curry with snakehead fish (no coconut milk) was a little bit thin and one dimensional in it's sourness despite that this is touted ad one of Chote Chitr's signature dish. This place is a pain to find as the taxi drivers have no idea where this place is 2 blocks from the backpacker central, Kao San road, so they keep wanting to take you there. Look it up on google maps, print it out, and take it with you, and show the driver and people on the street the map with the thai names.

Wow, I'm getting both hungry and full writing about all this mindblowing food. And that's not even mentioning the incredible Isan food- laab (or larb as it's sometimes written), sup naw mai (bamboo shoot salad), khao laam (sticky rice and coconut grilled in a bamboo tube), pad dok salit (stir fried pakalana flowers), and much, much more. But that will all have to wait till I write the cookbook!

Klong in the East Village

2009-03-13T01:39:00.000-07:00

I usually discount all the restaurants on St. Marks st. between 2nd and 3rd avenues, just keeping my head down and trying to get by all the sunglasses and head shops without incident. Not to mention that it's often hard to see into the semi-subterranean restaurants set back from the street hidden behind the knick knack shops. So I have Roopa of the Raspberry Eggplant blog to thank for notifying of Klong in the comments to my Tale of Two Khao Soi's post. I had never seen, heard of, or noticed Klong before and neither had my friend Sienna who came with me and even lives only a block away.

The place looks like one of thos trendy modern half-nightclub, half-Thai restaurant places with the full metal furniture, blasting music, and the menu full of graphic designy goodness, so I was a bit wary at first but when I asked the waiter where the Khao soi was on the menu, he knew exactly what I was talking about and directed right to the floating market curry noodles described as "Rice noodle with hard-boiled egg, fried shallot, bean sprout, and scallion in light curry broth", $8-10 depending on choice of meat. I've never seen this as a name for Khao Soi before and it doesn't make much sense to me since khao soi is not served exclusively at the floating market in Chiang Mai. Nonetheless, I've seen so many names for this dish I was unfazed, so I ordered it with mock vegetarian duck.

They advertised their happy hour even though we were there at 8 pm, so we both ordered the basil mojito, which was pretty tasty with the nice Thai twist of Thai basil instead of the standard mint for only $5. This could almost be considered a more native SE Asian cocktail since all the ingredients originate from the area: the limes, the basil, and the sugar from sugar cane which is actually native to Papua New Guinea rather than the Caribbean as is often thought. I've become really interested in mixology, classic cocktails, and novel twists on cocktails like the ever-so-tasty bramble (which I make with Central Park-picked juneberries and call the Ramble) and a Pomelo Pomegranate Sidecar I recently came up. In my surf band The Aquamen, where we name all our songs after cocktails, we often explore the history of the drinks (like the gin and tonic, which has a somewhat ethnobotanical/medicinal origin as a British combo of medicinal gin, quinine for malaria, and lime for scurvy created in India) or have to come up with new mixes to go with the songs. This happened when I wrote a song called Siberian Sidekick which was half Russian folk song and half spaghetti western/Rawhide sounding, and I searched for a cocktail that would go with this. All I could find was the Moscow Mule which is ginger beer or ginger ale, lime, and vodka. Well l'm a gingeer beer fanatic so this sounded great to me, but I not a big fan of vodka, due to its complicity in the death of the cocktail tk, so I switched it up for my favorite liquor, gin, instead. This turned out to be a great, refreshing drink, and became an instant hit with all my friends. The only problem is it's very hard to order this drink in any bar as very few stock ginger beer and it's just not the same with ginger ale. So imagine my excitement when after cooking Khao soi for my friend Ben and his wife (see? it all comes full circle eventually, despite the long digressions), Ben took me to the Lower East Side Australian bar Barramundi where my friend Z is working. Now I'd heard from another recently returned Aussie friend that a rum-based version of the Moscow Mule/Siberian Sidekick, the Dark and Stormy, was the national drink of Australia or at least Queensland territory because of the ginger-beer maker Bunderberg there. So I asked Z if he had ginger beer for making Dark and Stormies, which he in fact did. So I asked him to try whipping up a Siberian Sidekick with it, which he did and he loved it and said immediately that he'd add it to their already eclectic and lengthy cocktail menu. I'd love for them to be randomly inundated by orders for the Siberian Sidekick, so everyone go there and order one, especially on Monday, Friday, and Saturday when Z works there!

After that little ethnobotanical/cocktail (ethnomixological?) interlude, back to the food. I didn't try Sienna's green curry chicken though she seemed pretty happy with it, so I'll move right on to the main event. The Khao Soi arrived in an appropriately deep bowl to hold plenty of tasty curry and stacked with a good bunch of fried noodles so these were both promising signs. Breaking through the mound of fried noodles revealed some nice chunks of mock vegetarian duck, sprouts, and noodles, but not much else in terms of veggies, especially the the oh-so-good pickled mustard greens which give such a nice zing to the curry. The lack of this and other toppings on the side to add like the lime was made up for however by the depth of the curry broth, tending a little bit more towards the star-anise, musky side of things. It was hard to resist slurping down all the broth even though I was getting full from all the noodles.

This was definitely the most authentic Khao Soi I've found in the East Village, garnering it 4 stars. Even without knowing much about the other food, with the excellent Khao Soi and refreshing cheap drinks, Klong is definitely worth a visit. Perhaps ducking into the restaurant off of busy St. Marks makes it feel all the more like visiting some trendy noodle shop off a crowded Bangkok street. Setting is everything, right?

Klong

7 Saint Marks Pl

New York NY 10003

between Bowery and 2nd ave.

212.505.9955

Thai Tony's in Prospect Park and a successful defense

2008-11-26T23:07:00.000-08:00

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

2008-07-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

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 burger s 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?

2008-03-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-02-21T20:13:00.001-08:00

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

2008-01-25T09:06:00.001-08:00

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

2008-01-09T21:15:00.000-08:00

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.

A Tale of Two Khao Sois

2008-01-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

For this episode of your friendly neighborhood Khao Soi Blog, I'm branching out a bit from trying Khao Soi in restaurants to describing two versions of my own making, so you know that I walk the walk and don't just talk the talk. I've been cooking my own version of Khao Soi for 10 or more years since I asked Suriya, the chef at Suriya Thai restaurant in San Francisco to give me his delicious recipe for this dish during some of the great cooking classes he conducted in his restaurant's courtyard, while the upstairs neighbors blasted Abba's "Dancing Queen" over his attempts to tell us where to get the best curry paste. Such an SF moment!

So for the first part of this tale of two Khao Sois, we go to christmas eve dinner, where my family's "traditional" meal was a seafood gumbo. Not sure exactly where this came from since none of us are Cajun, but most likely stemmed from how easy it was to cook. Apparently I got my parents hooked on Khao Soi when I made it for them for mother's day this year, so they asked me if I would make it for the 7 people coming to our house for christmas eve dinner, reviving an even older tradition of our family where we, like all good Jews celebrating christmas, would order in Chinese take out for christmas eve and christmas dinner. I was glad to have a chance to proselytize this dish to more people, and gathered up all the necessary ingredients with the help of my parents to cook up a Khao Soi feast for everyone: sprouts, cilantro, limes, egg noodles, red curry paste, yellow curry paste, garam masala, coconut milk, tofu, pickled mustard greens, shallots, chili sauce, and "fish sauce". I put "fish sauce" in quotes because I make a vegan version of it with equal parts molasses, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and a dash of nutritional yeast to give it that characteristic sour/sweet/salty/fermented taste. This works quite well and most people don't even notice the difference.

After brewing the curry soup, cooking the noodles, and frying up tofu, shallots and noodles, I was ready to stack the plates high with all the tasty toppings, leaving the lime, shallots, and chili sauce for people to add on their own to their liking, I was quite happy with the results that you see above, ready to go out to the thousands of hungry christmas faithful (OK, it was just 7). Even though it was a bit hot for usual holiday fare due to the curry pastes and many were sweating by the end of the meal, most people gobbled it down and some even asked for seconds, all a good sign. I won't rate my own Khao Soi, but it's definitely worth a try making on your own from this recipe for instance, as a nice warming winter meal, or a refreshing, gonna-make-you-sweat summer dish.

For the other half of the story, I found this pre-packaged Khao Soi spice mixture from Lobo foods (or is it Globo? It says one thing on the front and another on the back) in my local favorite Thai/Indonesian grocery store, Udom Corp., so I figured, what the hell, I'll give it a try. This was fairly easy to cook, taking only about 45 minutes from start to finish, including chopping all the toppings, compared to about 1.5 hrs for the homemade Khao Soi above. This packet contains a brown powdered mixture of spices, sugar, salt, MSG, curry powder (why don't those count as spices as well?) and citric acid. I'm surprised that salt and MSG were not the first ingredients, since this stuff tasted extremely salty when I tasted the broth, more like ramen packaged broth than the thick, rich, sour taste that the Khao Soi broth should have. With this mixture, you're instructed to chop meat (tofu in my case), cook the spice mixture with coconut milk, add meat, cook for a bit, add more coconut milk, cook till meat is tender, then add cooked egg noodles, soy sauce, lime juice, and chili sauce. When I followed these directions, I was still overwhelmed by the saltiness of it, so I added some sugar (palm sugar of course! The only way to go for SE Asian cooking, and for any sugar junkies out there, you'll love this stuff. Even tastes great melted and poured on popcorn), which improved it a bit.

Once I'd added the noodles and all the requisite toppings (I guess I can only get them all when I make it myself!) it turned out to be quite passable since the broth was a more minor portion of the dish, with the tangy sour taste of the pickled mustard greens, the nuttiness of the fried shallots and noodles, and the zing of the chili sauce and fresh shallots starting to dominate. So if you're really pressed for time, I'd say this packet version of Khao Soi might be worth trying, though it is probably harder to locate for most people than the ingredients in the completely homemade version, the hardest to find of which are probably the curry pastes and palm sugar. These can all be found in a Chinese or SE Asian grocery store in your local chinatown fairly easily.

I'd give this packaged version 3 stars only if you make the amendments of palm sugar and all the toppings, maybe only worth it if you're stuck somewhere where you can only mail order your Khao Soi.

Lobo Foods Khao Soi Seasoning Mix

Siam Square in Riverdale/Spuyten Duyvil

2007-12-15T12:52:00.000-08:00

Finally Khao Soi makes it to the Bronx! I never would have believed that this would happen given the relative paucity of Thai restaurants in the Bronx, nor would I have found out about it had my perennial quest khompanion Chris not happened to be in the hood, stopped in this restaurant, and knew I was obsessed with this dish, so told me I needed to check it out. I'd made a previous failed attempt to visit this great-white-north representative of the Khao-soi-o-sphere since I work in the Bronx at the New York Botanical Garden, where I organized 2 cars and 7 people to trek clear to the other side of the Bronx for lunch, only to find that despite the neon sign in their window that said they were open for lunch and dinner, they do not open until 5 PM. So back to Siam Square I went on a rare evening when I found myself still in the Bronx with my friends Jolene (congrats on her new book chapter publication on Mayan healthcare!) and Anthony, who were excited to find a good new restaurant in their hood, even though they were moving out of there that night.

Once we finally made it into this mysterious Thai outpost up a long hill on an icy night, we we greeted by a warm, lavishly decorated interior with plenty of thai fabrics, puppets, and instruments. The prices are a bit high especially for the "Kao Soi" at $17, even when we ordered it with tofu instead of shrimp and chicken. This was probably higher than even Kittichai, the priciest place I'd been to on this Khao Soi tour. Hmm, maybe the rents are even higher in Riverdale than in SOHO. In the end it was probably worth it since it was very tasty, and the other dishes we got, sautéed watercress with garlic and Pad Kee Mao (drunken noodles), were both very good and under $10.

The Khao Soi came with all the toppings on top already, leaving out half the fun of eating this stuff for us, but what can you do? This had a minimal set of toppings with just mung bean sprouts, raw shallots, a lime wedge, and scallions, missing the fried shallots, fried noodles, and ever-so-important pickled mustard greens. But despite the lack of these rich, flavor-inducing components, the broth and soup had a complex flavor with plenty of sourness and spice. They didn't even ask us how spicy we wanted things but maybe inferred that we were serious about spice and Thai food when we ordered the Khao Soi and Pad Kee Mao. As usual, the dish was a bit short on the broth/curry, not lasting quite as long as the noodles, and especially for $17 and with broth this good, there should be more. But maybe it's hard to get coconut milk in the nosebleed section of New York. Who knows! I'd definitely recommend this place if you're nearby, you have some money to spend, or you order some of the other, cheaper-yet-still-tasty dishes on the menu.

The hostess said she was from Chiang Mai, as expected, and said she was excited to go back there and visit next summer. Mmmm, Thai food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, delicious tropical fruits like the best in the world fruit, the mangosteen, and cheap, relaxing Thai massages! I want to go back!

Siam Square

564 Kappock St
Bronx,‎ NY‎ 10463
(718) 432-8200

Thai Market in the Upper West Side

2007-11-23T20:05:00.000-08:00

Supposedly related to the former Land Thai which moved to the Upper East Side. The decor inside is funky and fun with old marble tables, brick walls, bare bulbs, gold leaf, large posters of Thai night markets, and ducts (It's all ducts these days!) that give it a nice spacious feel.

For once Chris, my faithful Khao Soi khompanion, and I were really hungry, having to stretch out our stomachs for tomorrow's Turkey Day meal, so we ordered two different mains (Khao soi and Pad See Ew noodles) and an appetizer, daikon cakes, so we got try more of a range of their dishes. The daikon cake, fried and mixed with mung bean sprouts, eggs, and chinese chives, was quite tasty, with a nice variety of textures from the crunchy exterior daikon with a soft inside, the crisp sprouts and the green soft chives. Chris thought it was a bit too spicy, but I've blown out my Scoville unit gauge from falling in love with the hundreds of Peruvian hot sauces called aji during my field work down there, so I actually asked for some extra hot sauce for these. Given that many had criticized the blandness of Thai Market's food, I took it as a good sign that this appetizer was highly flavored. The Pad see ew was good as well but a bit unspicy for my tastes, so I would have gone for the spicier but similar Pad kee mao despite the warnings against it on the web. This was a good dish for Chris though.

I believe this is the first Khao Soi I've had in New York that has the complete set of toppings that I think of traditionally coming with the dish: fresh and fried shallots, fried noodles, mung bean sprouts, pickled mustard greens, and chili sauce if you ask for it. This right away put me in a good mood about the potential of this dish to show up other places' versions even though I'd heard many complaints that the food here was underspiced or not flavorful. So after taking my requisite photos and tossing on the toppings (patience, Chris, patience!) I went first for a spoonful of the broth, and it definitely didn't disappoint. There was the rich sweetness of the coconut milk, the sourness of the mustard greens and from the broth itself, and finally the bite of the chillies, This seemed to have it all! Well, ok, it could've had a bit more broth in which to dunk the plentiful fried and soft noodles, especially since it was so tasty, but I guess they're going with the thought, "leave them wanting more." Aside from more broth I really wouldn't change anything about this Khao soi, and that's saying a lot after trying 12 versions of this dish in NY.

I asked the hostess after our meal where exactly they were from and she said Chiang Mai, so that explains why they have Khao soi on their menu and why they know how to do it proper with all the fixin's!

Thai Market Inc
960 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10025
between 107th and 108th streets
(212) 280-4575

Chili Thai in Hell's Kitchen (or have the real estate people renamed it "Clinton" now?)

2007-11-16T14:16:00.000-08:00

I heard about this place on the Chowhound boards with
some supposed relation to Sripraphai, but when I asked our server, she knew nothing about it. She did say she was from the area around Chiang Mai in Thailand, being a good reason why they had Khao Soi on the menu. This place has been getting really good reviews and has only been open several months, so new in fact that Google still lists it as Cozy Thai, perhaps its previous incarnation.

Cozy Thai might be a better name since it is pretty tiny with only about 8 2-person tables. Sorry for the crummy phone camera picture. It is very nicely done for the small space, however, not feeling cramped at all with a nice dark wood on the walls, good lighting (I like to see my delicious food!), and not too noisy on the Thursday night we were there after checking out my friend Martin Dockery's excellent one-man storytelling show Wanderlust. Since it was pretty late when we got there we only ordered one dish, so I can say what the other food is like, but other reviewers seem to love it.

I would say this is in the top four of Khao Soi's I've had in New York so far, up there with Pam Real, Sripraphai, and Ozen, as it had a delicious broth that didn't skimp on the coconut milk, sourness, mustard greens, or spices. It was so good in fact, that despite having had some delicious pastries earlier (my other food obesession, hmm, maybe an idea for another blog given that I live in what I've dubbed "Dessert Row" with Babycakes, Sugar Sweet Sunshine, Sugar, and Il Laboratorio di Gelato!) from How Sweet It Is in the LES courtesy of Naomi, I downed the entire bowl to the last drop, which I rarely do. Or maybe it was that I hadn't brought a to-go container which I usually do, as I hate to create new plastic trash that to-go containers do in spades. I wish someone would make a collapsible silicone food container that you could fit in your bag or pocket for situations like this. Silicone is the plastic that has the least leachants like bisphenol-A and phthalates that polyethylene, polycarbonate, PVC and other plastic containers contain, really bad for hot foods and your reproductive health as these are human hormone disruptors.

Anyway... back to the yummy food at hand! Naomi had tasted the Khao Soi from Regional Thai Taste before, so she was blown away by this one. The toppings of fried noodles, a lime wedge, and pickled mustard greens were already in there when the dish was brought to our table, and the chili sauce and shallots were absent (does anyone in NYC do these?), but I didn't really notice it since it was spicy and sour enough. Perhaps in a small place like this it's easier not to have lots of extra side dishes to keep around and clean. Definitely a recommended stop if you're up in this neighborhood.

Chili Thai
712 9th Ave
New York ‎ NY‎ 10019
between 48th/49th street
(212) 265-5054

Regional Thai in Chelsea

2007-11-10T20:52:00.000-08:00

This restaurant has a related version of the dish called Chiang Rai noodles or Kow Soy. Chiang Rai is another Northern Thai town nearish to Chiang Mai, the area where Khao Soi basically originates.

No Thai staff that I could see, except they told me "the chef is definitely Thai, I'm sure of that." when I asked what part of Thailand s/he was from that they had Khao Soi on their menu. The environs are pleasant enough, with a nice saffron orange color scheme and Thai writing all over the walls, perhaps to make up for the lack of any Asians in there. I have my suspicions that they share a kitchen and waitstaff with the Salsa y Salsa Mexican restaurant next door given the matching color schemes and that both cuisines use plenty of lime, garlic, and cilantro.

They gave us a free super sweet fried noodle and bean sprout appetizer which I didn't really understand the point of, but hey, it was "on the house" so what the hell!

My friend Chris, my best companion in this quest for the ultimate NY Khao Soi has finally seen the light that he should order this dish when we go out, so he got the standard chicken version and I got the vegetarian tofu version. We didn't therefor get to try any other dishes aside from the overly sweet appetizer, but we did strike up a conversation with two people at the table next to us who were wondering why we were taking so many pictures of the food and none of ourselves. They said their fried rice dish was passable but nothing exciting.

Both versions of the Khao Soi we got (yes, I tasted the chicken version's broth, despite my pesca-non-crustacean-pastry-veganism, so call me an opportunivore if you will) were very brothy, salty soup stock flavor, not enough coconut milk or sourness. It was almost like they used an onion soup mix base or something. There were some good toppings— fried noodles, scallions, cilantro, the essential pickled mustard— but no shallots fresh or fried, no chili paste, and the toppings were already on there, so no adjusting the taste to your liking. The noodles were some very strange large round noodles like udon, the likes of which I'd never seen in Thai food, and they were a bit hard to handle with the small spoons we were given. Maybe it's something "regional" or maybe it's something Mexican. ;-)

All in all, a bit underwhelming, especially when you could go another 25 blocks north and be at Pam Real or 20 blocks south and be at Galangal, both of which have much better versions.

Regional Thai Taste
208 7th Ave
New York, NY 10011
and 22nd street
(212) 807-9872

Sripraphai in Woodside, Queens

2007-11-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally made it to the Thai food Mecca of NYC, Sripraphai, sometimes called the best Thai food this side of Thailand! Lucky we got there at 6 PM, because even though it's huge (we couldn't even see all the tables in the 2 rooms), it filled up fairly soon after we got there. And there's a reason for this: the food rocks. my world and your world. They have both the standard (read ho-hum) Thai dishes you see in every Thai restaurant in the city like Pad Thai and egg rolls (many of these are very good here, though), and then there's the way out there dishes that you don't see on many Thai menus like deep-fried watercress salad (definitely crunchy, but tastes more like "fried" than watercress), soft shell crab curry, and beef offal soup that are the real standouts. We of course orderd the Khao Soi (spelled Kao Soy here), but the advantage of having 10 people at dinner with you is that we got to try many dishes like the ones listed above plus green papaya salad (zesty and yummy), green curry duck (delicious, at least the curry part), pad see ew (a.k.a. drunken noodles with basil, great here and everywhere I've had it), and red curry noodles (sort of like Khao Soi minus the toppings and the sourness). Check this Chowhound post for some other standout dishes.

OK, on to the Khao Soi! It was easy to spot on the menu, easy to order veggie, and easy to eat here. It came with the toppings separate which I like as you can adjust the sourness yourself, but it was a bit strange that they gave you a bowl of lime juice rather than a lime wedge to squeeze yourself onto the dish. Seems like it'd be a bit less fresh that way. There was the pickled mustard and fresh shallots, but unfortunately no fried shallots, probably my favorite topping. The broth was delicious, rich, silky, and complex, and the fried noodles on top stayed crispy to complement the soft noodles in the broth. It again had that deeper star anise flavor like Kittichai's Khao soi did as well, so I'm not sure if this is an East Coast US variation, or a regional Thai variation, since I don't remember having it like that in Chiang Mai. Who knows! Delicious nonetheless, just a little non-traditional in my opinion.

Wow, this has been quite a week with three Khao Soi's in one week! Monday at Em Thai sampling a friend's Khao Soi, Tuesday at Kittichai, and Saturday here at Sripraphai. Maybe I should try to make one more before the week is up.

So I'm giving this one 4 stars solely for the slight dearth of toppings and no fresh lime, but remember this is just for the Khao Soi and I'd give the restaurant itself 6 stars for being so delectable even with the crowds.

Sripraphai Thai Restaurant
6413 39th Ave
Woodside, NY 11377
(718) 899-9599
near 64th st. and Roosevelt Ave (7 train to 61st st./Woodside, or E, F, R, V to Roosevelt Ave/Jackson Heights)

Kittichai in SOHO

2007-10-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

This would be the prima donna of Thai restaurants in New York, if Thai restaurants in New York were opera singers. The place is very done up with a floating pool in the middle of the dining room, gravity-defying cymbidium orchids dancing over the pool, pickled dendrobium orchids in many backlit vials in the entry room/bar, and silk curtains curtains lining the wall. The place ain't cheap either, with main courses ranging from $12-36, averaging $22 (I'm such a geek I'm tempted to give you the median as well, but I'll control myself!).

I'd been excited about coming here to try the Khao Soi for months after sending my friend Doug to try it here this summer and he came back with great reviews of it. So I was instantly disappointed not to find it on the menu, and then asking the server, she informed us that the menu had changed recently and they no longer served what she called "Curry Noodle Chicken". After some pleading she asked the chef if they could still do it, and then the good news came from the kitchen that they could, just without the noodles. I had to send her back a second time to ask them to do a vegetarian version with tofu, and this, after some frustration on her part, she said was OK as well. It seems from these prices they should be a little more willing to handle special requests. From their old menu, this appears to be the dish we finally got, minus the noodles and chicken:
Kao Soy - Organic Chicken Breast, northern style light yellow curry, egg noodles, lime zest ($20.00)

When it came it looked nice, though a little dwarfed by the huge copper bowl it was in (see pic above). It tasted quite good, although I'm not sure I'd call it a Khao Soi. It definitely had the yellow curry broth that had some sourness but it had a strange musky taste that I hadn't tasted before that might have been from star anise or kra chai (wild ginger), used in some northern Thai cooking. If this was really how they used to make it when they did have it on the menu, it lacked any of the key toppings, though the curry was so full of veggies (lantern/thai eggplant, chilis, bamboo shoots, broccoli, mushrooms, snap peas) that you could maybe live without them, save the pickled mustard greens which add such a nice tartness to the dish. That's a necessity! The rest of the food was pretty good, with a whole fried Bronzino in curry sauce, sautéed chinese broccoli, tuna tartar, and a banana blossom and artichoke salad. Interesting twists on Thai dishes, but it seems like you're largely paying for the decor. Thanks Mom and Dad for the tasty meal!

Kittichai (warning! High flash-oriented site!)
60 Thompson St.
New York‎, NY‎ 10012
between Broome and Spring
(212) 925-2971

Kin Khao in SOHO

2007-10-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

This is quite a snazzy place in the middle of SOHO that looks more like an old boys cigar lounge and bar than a Thai restaurant, because that's what it probably used to be. It's part of the Kelley and Ping restaurant mini-empire. Pretty pricey entrees to match the setting as well, going from $13-21 and Khao Soi coming in at about $16. Here it is clearly labeled as Khao Soi- Chiang Mai noodles, nestled among several other Northern Thai/Burmese/Lao dishes which is pretty rare to see in NY Thai restaurants. The dish is fairly accurate with a nearly complete set of toppings - fried noodles, shallots, pickled mustard greens, and chilis- except the fried shallots which add a nice crunch to the dish that the fried noodles don't quite do as they get soft from the curry quickly. The broth was quite tasty but again could've been more sour, and it had a strong fermented or musky taste that I haven't tasted before, perhaps from fish sauce. There also could have been a bit more of the curry broth to scoop up, but as it was served in a shallow dish with the toppings right next to the noodles, this might not have worked. They should switch to a bowl with toppings in a separate dish.

Only Kittachai and Sripraphai that I know of are left as places to try this delicious dish. Looking at all these pictures of it and writing about it is making my mouth water for it even though I had it only a few days ago.

Kin Khao Restaurant
171 Spring St.
New York NY 10012
between W. Broadway and Thompson
(212) 966-3939

Ozen Asian Fusion Cuisine on the Upper West Side

2007-07-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

One of the most authentic Khao Soi's I've found in New York yet, up there with Pam Real's for the best, and very tasty with almost all the proper toppings, and proper sourness to the curry broth, even though this restaurant spreads itself too thin by doing Japanese, Chinese, and Thai food. This is usually the way for a restaurant to get itself into trouble, but in this case the chef is Thai and perhaps felt he had to have the other foods on the menu to bring in the people from the Upper West Side. I have heard from other reviews the other cuisines aren't so great, which makes sense. The restaurant is a nice setting to eat, with dark wood tables and paneling with illuminated wall panels that are made of what looks like huge amounts of pressed clear caviar. Who knows, maybe it used to be a caviar restaurant! The Khao Soi came with all the toppings already on it– pickled mustard greens, red onions (or maybe they were shallots. It's hard to tell when they're finely chopped like that), and fried noodles. It was just missing the fried shallots and chili sauce, although it was hot enough. I was going to ask for chili sauce (nam prik kiga for you vegans, or nam pla prik for those that like it with fish sauce), but it was plenty spicy as it was. The broth was nice and sour. They're obviously not afraid of that here! The other dish we ordered, Jungle Curry, was fine, but nothing stellar. My friend decided he should have ordered the Khao Soi as well, but instead wound up eating half of mine! They had a reasonable wine, beer, sake, plum wine and rice wine selection, but nothing vast. Definitely order the Khao Soi if you go here, you won't be sorry!

Ozen Asian Fusion Cuisine Inc
760 Amsterdam Ave
New York NY 10025
between 97th & 98th st.
(212) 678-0300

Nooch in Chelsea

2007-06-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Although this restaurant got mediocre reviews for its high design and for being a trendy Chelsea hang out, they had a nice presentation of Khao Soi with fried noodles on top, and a separate plate with the toppings (lime, chili pepper, raw scallions, and pickled mustard greens, missing fried scallions). It's all about the toppings! Pretty tasty, but needed a little more zest/tang/sourness to the broth. It was a bit heavy on the coconut milk. Do they think Americans are scared of sourness?! A little lacking in vegetables and heavy on the noodles in the broth. Restaurant was insanely trendy and all about the decor, but I was facing the window and didn't have to deal with it, and the Khao Soi (their spelling is Kao Soi Gai, i.e. with chicken, but you can ask for veg) was only $8. It was almost full at 8 on a Thursday night.

Nooch
143 Eighth Ave
New York NY 10011
and 17th st.
(212) 691-8600

Galanga Thai in the West Village

2007-05-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

Fairly good noodles, nice toppings, sour pickled cabbage, fried shallots, crispy fried noodles. But the broth, although tasty, did not have the addictive Khao Soi sourness, and was lacking the key tamarind, coriander, and cumin that make the dish what it is. Perhaps a southern Thai interpretation of Khao soi. Great ambiance, all dark wood interior, fast service. Called "Chiang Mai Noodles" here.

Galanga Thai
149 W 4th st.
New York NY 10012
Between 6th ave & MacDougal
(212) 228-4267

Pam Real Thai in Hell's Kitchen

2007-05-22T01:29:00.000-07:00

Here at Pam Real is where I started convincing Chris, my Thai dining companion that he should be ordering the Khao soi everywhere we went together. Nice sour broth, with that addictive tang that keeps you coming back for more. Could've had more (any?) pickled cabbage and fried shallot toppings, but it was great without those. The place wasn't huge on ambience, I seem to remember fluorescent lights, but it was packed constantly on a Tuesday night, a testament to the quality of their food. Called "Northern Thai Noodles" or "Curry Noodles".

Pam Real Thai
404 W 49th st
between 9 and 10th ave
New York, NY

Lemongrass Grill in the Village/Union Square

2007-04-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

This mini-chain has various locations around the city. I ate at the one on E 13th st. near Union Square, so I can only vouch for the food at this one. Probably the furthest from Khao soi I've had yet. More like a yellow coconut curry broth with some noodles, no sourness (why do many thai restaurants seem scared to make it truly sour?) and no toppings to speak off. Tasty nonetheless, but not Khao soi by any stretch of the imagination. The dish is called Chiang Mai noodles here. 'Nuff said.

Lemongrass Grill
9 E 13th St
New York, NY 10003
(212) 242-0606
and other locations throughout the city

Em Thai in Carroll Gardens

2006-12-18T00:42:00.000-08:00

Em Thai's Khao soi is fairly accurate tasting, my first in NYC. A bit heavy on the fried noodles, more like a chinese chow mein dish, and low on the veggies and toppings, but the broth tastes nice and sour. Several people who lived in Thailand that ate with me liked it, but said it wasn't the best in NY, and I should try Pam Real Thai in midtown. Here the dish is called "Chiang Mai Noodles". Reasonably priced and fancy decor made out of left-over lego blanks. Can you tell I'm happy to be reunited with the dish after 6 long months of separation from it in Thailand?

Em Thai
278 Smith St,
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Between DeGraw & Sackett St