If anyone reading this has met me in person, they probably know that Kin Khao is pretty much my favorite restaurant in San Francisco. And while I have found pasta restaurants and other restaurants that I love, pasta is something I can do reasonably well at home, but Thai food on the level of Kin Khao is something that I think I could only aspire to. During the pandemic they’ve been closed, so when I found out they were opening a fast casual restaurant basically around the block from me, I got incredibly excited. This lead to me to order a bunch of food one Friday night so we could give it a try.
Sadly, some of the dishes I love (the Massaman beef cheek curry especially) is not on the menu, but it also means I have a whole new menu of things to try out. Since I have had the wings many times (and they are nice), I decided to order things I had not yet tried to appease my craving for amazing Thai food.
I went with three of the small dishes and two of the larger. However, the small dishes were all served cold or room temperature, so we started with the large dishes as I may have picked up dinner a smidge too early. The large dishes we had were the Yarowaj Noodles ($20) with Bangkok Chinatown stir-fried noodles, egg, green onions, cilantro and XO sauce, and the Khao Soin ($17) with a northern-style chicken curry broth, egg noodles, pickled mustard greens, shallots, cilantro and lime.
Honestly, both dishes were fantastic. The noodles in the Yarowaj Noodles were really thick and tasty, and the sauce was really well balanced. They keep some chili vinegar on the side so you can definitely add a bit more heat and acid to the dish if you want. The Khao Soin was packaged really well with all the crunchy bits kept in one part with the noodles and hot stuff underneath. The broth was in another container so it just involved assembling at home. If you’re on your own, you can just dump it all together in the large bowl provided, but because we were splitting, we had to divvy it up between two. It was a great dish with some very pleasant broth, perfectly cooked rice noodles and great the crunchy stuff added texture.
The small plates were Som Tum Papaya Salad with corn, snap peas, cherry tomatoes, spicy garlic and lime dressing, dried shrimp and peanuts, Fresh Spring Rolls with poached prawns, bean sprouts, scallions, fresh herbs, peanuts and chili jam, and Nam Tok served Isaan style with lime, chili, rice powder and crunchy lettuce cups.
The papaya salad was a winner in my book as it had a really bright flavor and crispy vegetables. The spring rolls were hands down the best ones I’ve ever eaten. They can sometimes be uninteresting, but the chili jam was a great accompaniment and somehow even the flavors of the roll on their own were spectacular. The nam tok was not my favorite dish. Perhaps it just didn’t travel well, but it was a bit chewy overall and really lacked a bit of balance. It was still nice, just not quite as good as the other dishes.
While the fast casual version of Kin Khao was just slightly less good than the version I’ve been before. I mean I did really miss that beef curry. But overall, it’s definitely something we’ll be ordering from again as they seem to create magical Thai flavor combinations, or maybe even outdoor dining as it’s pretty close to our place! The menu isn’t big, so I guess I’ll be learning what to order, and they do have a chicken sandwich that looks amazing and might be something I pick up for lunch sometime in the future!
Score: 4.5/5
Recommendations: Spring rolls and the curry noodle soup!
Kin Khao Dogpatch
690 Indiana St
San Francisco, CA 94107
