London makes a lot of noise about being the world food capital thanks to its culinary diversity, offering everything from Peruvian and Indian to Italian and Spanish.
There are other contenders to the title, including New York, Hong Kong and Melbourne - but when it comes Thai cuisine, London is arguably a clear winner. The Thai street food produced at four of the English capital's restaurants – Som Saa, Smoking Goat, Kiln and Farang – is among the most innovative and impressive served anywhere outside Thailand itself.
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The first of these "New Thai” to open, in 2014, was Smoking Goat, a funky Thai barbeque concept in Soho headed by Ben Chapman. As you might expect, there is a heavy emphasis on BBQ, with dishes such as smoked aubergine, egg and chilli, and khao soi smoked goat shoulder with crispy noodles. Last year Chapman opened another Thai restaurant, Kiln, offering memorable dishes such as red mullet with sour yellow curry, as well as a superb Tamworth pork belly with brown crab meat. All the ingredients are painstakingly sourced and the results are well worth the effort, though the sharing plates may not be large enough for hungry diners.
Som Saa, which began as a pop-up in Hackney, was another of last year's openings, and now has a permanent home in trendy Shoreditch. Chef Andy Oliver, who worked at David Thompson’s Nahm in Bangkok, offers a feast of searingly hot versions of Thai cuisine with a twist, such as dry jungle curry stir fry with pheasant, wild ginger and fresh green peppercorns, and five-spice soy-braised beef cheek with chilli vinegar sauce.
The newest addition is Farang, which takes its name from the slightly pejorative Thai word for a white foreigner and which initially opened as a pop-up, in February in Highbury, north London, on the site of a former Italian restaurant. Chefs Seb Holmes and Dan Turner have previously worked at the other “Anglo-Thai” London restaurants and keep it real by making regular trips to Northern Thailand. Again, this is not strictly classical Thai street food – one jungle curry is made with Cornish monkfish and salmon - but it's utterly delicious. Mouth-watering starters include salt beef croquetas with pickled bamboo shoots, fish sauce, mustard greens and burnt chilli dipping sauce. My favourite dish though, is a meltingly tender half spring chicken and minced tiger prawn red curry with sweet basil. The chicken is brined for several hours and then cooked in the old pizza oven – proving necessity is the mother of invention.
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