It’s hard trying new restaurants of a specific type of food when you already know places that are REALLY good. The first night my friend was in town, I assumed it was going to be chilled out and relaxing, and we’d wander up to North Beach and have some pasta or something. However, when we were out having a bit of wine before dinner, someone else had a different idea about going for Thai food. Mostly because we were really close to the amazing Thai restaurant in San Francisco. Occasionally, you can get a last minute booking, but we were not so lucky that night. However, our server told us she was Thai, and we started querying her about where we could go. She suggested Farmhouse Kitchen, although she did warn us it’s more fusion, but still really tasty. Since it wasn’t that close, we did check for availability on Saturday night instead, and since they had one, we went ahead and made a booking. (So did Kin Khao, but we do love to try new places, so we went here based solely on the fact that a Thai person said it was good. And the website claims it has the best Thai food in San Francisco. If it was on Wikipedia, it would definitely require a [citation needed].)
When we arrived, the restaurant was very full, and they were even setting up more tables in the corner for other parties that were coming in. Sometimes if a place is popular, it’s a good sign that the food is pretty good! The venue itself is rather odd. The decorations almost seemed an afterthought, as the room itself does lend a cafeteria-style dining experience with the design. However, they tried to Thai it up with really obnoxious decorations much like you would see in those stupid touristy areas of Thailand. Even the outfits lent the restaurant the atmosphere that it wasn’t taking itself seriously with the juxtaposition of “authentic” Thai trousers combined with Hawaiian shirts. The restaurant is obviously very gay friendly as well (so huzzah), but it just seemed so tacky. I really hoped the style of the restaurant wasn’t going to reflect on the food, however. My friend decided to get a baby coconut to drink, while my partner and I split a bottle of wine. We were also given some pickled vegetables to snack on while we were perusing the menu. The pickled vegetables were really tasty, and it gave me hope that the meal would be good.
We agreed on a few dishes to try, so we ordered the chicken wings and papaya salad with salted crab to start followed by the panang curry short ribs, the green curry chicken noodles and a side of XO Broccolini. We were asked heat level on the salad; I wanted hot, but we went for medium for our less spice inclined friend. After we ordered our friend went to work on her baby coconut, but gave up very quickly as she felt the inside was too hard and there wasn’t enough for it to be worth trying to dig out the coconut meat. Not a good start. The chicken wings arrived with the papaya salad. The chicken wings seemed a bit tiny for $11. I mean, they weren’t even full wings, just four middle pieces of the wing. It was a tasty dish, but it didn’t really seem to wow me. The papaya salad was alright, but I wasn’t a fan of the crab. Unfortunately, they put giant wedges of cabbage under the salad, so while it looked like a fairly decent amount of salad, it was deceptively small. For me it wasn’t that hot, but for my friend, it was a bit too hot. It didn’t really have an amazing flavor however, I think I have had better papaya salads in much cheaper corner Thai restaurants.
When the mains arrived, the short rib definitely looked much better than the curry. The curry looked a bit watery and the noodles were very clumped together on the side of the plate. I tried the curry first, and the chicken was really overcooked and the curry sauce was insipid. The only real flavor was heat. Needless to say, we didn’t really feel inclined to finish that dish. The flavor of the short rib was better, but to say it was a panang curry is a misnomer, as it is basically a braised short rib with a couple of spoonfuls of sauce on top. Given that the short rib was slightly overcooked and a bit stringy, the lack of sauce was incredibly telling as extra moisture was severely needed. The blue rice served with it was actually really good, but good rice does not make for a good dish. The broccolini was cooked well, but the XO flavor was non-existant (and my friend eats XO everything, so she’s the expert). Needless to say given the lackluster showing from the main courses, we definitely opted to forego dessert.
Oh, did I mention that if someone is celebrating a birthday they bang drums as loud as possible and shout and sing in the room? At least two people were celebrating their birthdays, so we got to “enjoy” two such displays of obnoxiousness while we were trying to find positives about what we were eating. My friend also refused to go to one of the bathrooms because of the strobing disco ball near one of them as it was hurting her eyes, and she was worried she was going to become epileptic (don’t worry, we know that isn’t how a person becomes epileptic, but she was properly annoyed). The service wasn’t stellar either, as they kept trying to take things away before we were finished. The whole atmosphere was bizarre, as if they are trying to be a party restaurant instead of someplace that serves good food.
To say that everything about this place is ridiculously overrated is not an understatement. Much of the food was lacking any flavor except for hot, and I’m very aware that Thai food is supposed to have that balance of sweet, salty, sour, spicy and bitter. Sadly, that balance was really lacking. Every time I put a bite of food in my mouth, I wished I was at Kin Khao. I’m glad we gave it a try, because it’s easy to just go back to the same places, but I don’t think I’ll be returning here. Ever. Even if someone else said they would pay.
Food: ★★☆☆☆
Service: ★★☆☆☆
Atmosphere: ★☆☆☆☆
Value: ★★☆☆☆
Overall: ★★☆☆☆
Farmhouse Kitchen
710 Florida St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
