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.

A Tale of Two Khao Sois

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

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

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?)

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

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

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)