Stuff to eat. Mostly around St. Louis.

Whiskey and Soba 8/26/20 Whiskey and Soba 8/26/20

iNDO: Thai Street Food

Restaurants are not doing well.

I imagine most of you know this already, but in case you don’t: they aren’t. No matter what they’re telling you when you pick up or what you’re seeing on social media, know that they’re all suffering. Some more than others. Many are doing “okay” at best. With little support or guidance from the government and a shift to primarily doing curbside takeout, it’s not much of a surprise.

I’ve been particularly interested in restaurants that have pivoted their concepts. You can’t expect diners to drop $100+ per person on a takeout tasting menu, nor can you expect any chef to want to do that. You want to eat iNDO’s omakase out of a plastic container just as much as Nick Bognar wants to serve it to you.

The most logical pivot for many of the higher end restaurants is to workshop a more casual concept. Something they’ve envisioned for restaurant #2 or always wanted to try. SHIFT with their sandwiches. Elmwood with their pizzas. And now iNDO with their Thai street food.

I miss iNDO, but damn, I’ll miss their Thai street food (so, Nick, you better open that restaurant ASAP)—even with us living in a golden age of Thai food in St. Louis (Chao Baan, Fork & Stix, redacted upcoming Thai restaurant).

Since I had the chance to try the whole menu and liked all of it, I figured it’s worth talking about the whole thing.

Nick's no dummy, so you’ll instantly recognize a few iNDO classics have made the street food cut. The sweet and tangy cabbage salad with candied peanuts and tamarind dressing has made the cut as-is, because it’s perfect. Lamb ribs have been replaced by baby back pork ribs in the palm sugar ribs set. I was concerned they wouldn’t be as fall-apart-tender and delicious as the lamb ribs, and that would require me to break each of Nick’s fingers, but lucky for both of us, they were just as good. Last but certainly not least is a dish that combines two of Spencer’s favorites: the braised short ribs and the smoky, rich khao soi soup.

I was debating how to go about ordering my talking points, but it’s easiest to just go straight down the menu. Let’s go.

Chicken satay skewers: I love satay. I love meat on a stick. I especially love the red curry coconut peanut sauce you get for dipping these. I’d recommend this dish if it was just a bowl of that, TBH.

Papaya salad: A Thai classic, mixing all the things you love into one dish. It’s sweet, crunchy, fresh, a bit tart, and it’s got a special little somethin’ from the candied shrimp.

Chicken wings: One of my favorites FOR SURE. After they’re marinated, they’re dredged in cornstarch and fried twice, insuring they’re extra crispy and extra delicious. They’re topped with some crispy garlic and Nick’s top secret spice mix (there’s salt, pepper, and sugar involved) and served with some spicy, herby naam jim. I will not share these with you.

Poke: It’s not like Nick could completely avoid working with raw fish. His take on poke is a bit more Thailand than Hawaii, as you’d expect, but damn it was good.

Vegetarian cold noodles: My girlfriend tried these before I did and immediately became Gollum. I was given one (measly) bite, but considering how she devoured them while saying, “my precious, my precious”, I think it’s safe to say they’re a solid choice.

Crab & shrimp fried rice: Just what you expect, but probably better. Dried shrimp give it that Thai funk you crave.

Spicy Thai sausage (Sai Oua): My favorite of all the dishes, I think. A fairly traditional herb-packed sai oua sausage served with the same naam jim as the wings.

Fried sweet bananas: I mean…tempura fried bananas topped with condensed milk and toasted coconut.

Cabbage Salad | onion straws, candied peanuts, tamarind dressing

Chicken Satay | coconut peanut sauce, cucumber salad

Crab & Shrimp Fried Rice: blue crab, candied shrimp, egg, scallions

Papaya Salad | avocado, candied shrimp, candied peanuts, tomatoes

Poke | daily fresh fish, sweet soy, crispy chips

Thai Sausage (Sai Oua) | sticky rice, spicy thai chili sauce, fried shallots

Vegetarian Cold Noodles | crispy shallots, ground peanuts, sweet soy

Fried Sweet Bananas | condensed milk, toasted coconut

Spencer 9/5/16 Spencer 9/5/16

Kitchen Kulture

I can't recall if it was last winter or the winter before it when I first encountered Kitchen Kulture, but I remember it like it was yesterday: I was at the Tower Grove Winter Farmers Market, contemplating if I should attempt to eat the Rebel Roots caramel apples I had just purchased on my drive home, when I turned and saw their booth. I'd followed them on social media and seen their Sump lunch menus, but I'd never managed to actually eat their food. I wandered over and perused the menu, when chef/co-owner Mike Miller and co-owner Chris Meyer offered me a sample of their Mofu Tofu Saag Paneer. I'm pretty sure my response was something along the lines of, "Why is this so good?" I sampled everything they had to offer and left with pounds and pounds of Kitchen Kulture food. Soba noodle salad, Khao Soi curry, vinaigrettes, whatever. If they were selling it, I was buying it. Weekly Kitchen Kulture purchases became part of my life.

Flash forward to summer of 2016, and Kitchen Kulture (the restaurant is known as Kounter Kulture) has moved into the former Pint Size Bakery shop off Watson. You can still find them at the weekly TG Farmers Market, of course, but the take-out only restaurant, open Monday-Friday, 4:30-9:30pm, offers a totally different menu of food cooked to order.

If I'm passionate about any type of food, it's Asian food—a cuisine that continues to disappoint here in St. Louis. I've tried to explain it before, but there's this whole wide world of Asian food, ingredients, flavors, cooking techniques, etc. that just aren't being tapped into here. Mike Miller gets it. Seriously, no other chef in St. Louis has been able to grasp modern Asian flavors—particularly Southeast Asian and Japanese—like he has. And he's doing it using locally sourced produce.

On the lighter end of the spectrum, there are dishes like the White Peach and Pepper salad with a creamy miso vinaigrette and crunch coming from a sesame-togarashi brittle that shatters like sugary glass. The seasonal greens spring rolls, packed with rice noodles, cilantro, mint, and mango, come with a carrot-ginger sauce, and remind me of a meal I had just outside of the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia.

A Mofu tofu green curry with summer vegetables and ramen noodles gives Reeds American Table a run for their money as far as authentic curry goes—a pungent curry paste, made from scratch, mixed with coconut milk, fish sauce, and all those other funky Thai flavors delivers a Muay Thai elbow to your tongue.

On the heartier side of the menu, there's a Korean BBQ chicken rice bowl that makes your Chipotle burrito bowl look like it's child-sized. Crunchy, spicy, and sweet, the bulgogi chicken combined with heirloom tomatoes, fresh avocado, and a lime-cilantro dressing doesn't disappoint.

People typically generalize Japanese food as healthy, but believe me, the Japanese love fried food just as much—if not more—than Americans. They just don't eat buckets of it. The ping-pong ball-sized shrimp and pork gyoza tossed in tsume—a sweet, seafoody sauce—are perfect. The braised beef gyudon bowl is equally delicious.

I could write a book on my love of okonomiyaki. These Japanese pancakes are tied with takoyaki (basically grenades made of pancake dough and octopus) for my favorite Japanese food. Kounter Kulture's is kind of like if an okonomiyaki knocked up a Korean jeon pancake. Or maybe a frittata. Possibly a Dutch Baby? It's basically a puffed up egg-based pancake stuffed with your choice of kimchi, bacon, squid, and/or mushrooms, then topped with a sweet bbq sauce and mayo. It will feed you for days.

But their buns...their buns are out of this world. If Kounter Kulture only sold buns, I'd still tell you it's one of my favorite places in St. Louis. Do you go for the pork with smoked onions, chile-mustard sauce, and jalapeno slaw? Or the tofu bun with sesame cabbage, homemade kewpie mayo, and Japanese BBQ sauce? It doesn't matter, as long as you also get the catfish bun.

If I make a "Top 10 Dishes of 2016" list, there's a 95% chance this will be own it. Togarashi-spiced catfish is fried until as crunchy as possible (without overcooking the fish!), then tucked into a bun with a shishito pepper and cherry tomato remoulade. This is one of those bites where if you don't like it, you're wrong.

Kounter Kulture st.louis beef gyudon bowl

Spencer 10/28/15 Spencer 10/28/15

Little Serow

If you're wandering down 17th Street NW in D.C. trying to find the signless Little Serow, just look for the enormous line—that starts forming at 4:30pm—leading to an ordinary old basement door. There were a number of reasons that Little Serow (sounds like arrow) was on my must-try list this last visit to our nation's capital: the chef-owner is Johnny Monis, who also owns the untouchable Komi next door. The food is authentic northern Thai food, something near and dear to my heart. Plus, both Gerard Craft and Nini Nguyen told me to go. I'm a good listener.

There are no reservations. You get there, get in line, then wait your turn. Once you make it inside, you'll be greeted by darkness and bright teal walls. You don't order anything besides drinks—it's a $45 set menu. You sit, it starts.

The chefs work in a small kitchen to the left, close enough where you can see them but far enough away that you probably won't go bother them. We were seated at the long white bar (which I recommend aiming for) and excitedly got things kicked off. The first dish out was the Nam Prik Thai Orn, a spicy chili sauce made with salted fish, shrimp paste, and green peppercorns.

There's a whole mess of nam prik varieties, including the roasted green chili nam prik noom you can find at Fork & Stix, all of which are meant to be eaten as either a condiment or a dipping sauce. It's like the funky Thai version of ranch dressing, in that sense.

The Thai Orn had a deep, peppery flavor with a mild hit of shrimp paste. Paired with the veggies—or, better yet, the pork rinds—it was a perfect start to the meal. It assured me that what we were eating was nothing but authentic, the kind of food you rarely see in the U.S.

Our next two courses, the Ma Hor (sour fruit, dried shrimp, pork) and Yam Makheua Yao (eggplant, cured duck egg, mint), arrived together. We dug into the sour fruit plate first, a wonderful mix of sour and sweet. Every bite of this took me back to eating near the beaches of Southeast Asia, sitting out in the the tropical weather.

The Yam Makheua Yao brought back a different set of memories. After my first forkful of smokey eggplant, my body lit on fire from the inside out. Flashes of a misunderstanding with a Thai food stall in Singapore flooded my mind. I had tried to ask for my Som Tom salad less spicy, but apparently all she heard was MORE spicy. The result was me abandoning my lunch in a hurry, running to Starbucks to get something milky to relieve me of the burning pain in my mouth.

I wasn't going to bail on Serow for Starbucks, but like an angel sent from on high, our waitress appeared and asked if we were interested in their sweetened rice milk to help us cool down. Never has a drink tasted so good. It was like a Thai horchata. We each ended up drinking 3 or 4 glasses of that sweet nectar of the gods.

Laap Pla Duk Chiang Mai is not the prettiest dish by any stretch of the imagination, but this catfish and galangal salad is a winner. If my tastebuds were correct, it's kind of like all Thai ingredients blended together with grilled fish. Lemongrass, chilies, galangal—it punches you in the face with flavor. You can eat it with your fork, or you can spread it over cabbage, sticky rice, or whatever vegetable you prefer.

The runner up for favorite dish of the night went to the Tow Hu Thouk, crispy tofu tossed with ginger and peanuts. It was a fantastic mix of crisp and creamy. We definitely could have eaten another one of these.

We didn't eat much of the Het Grapao, stir fried mushrooms with basil and egg. The flavors were good—it's a vegetarian version of of the basil chicken I'd get in Singapore—but at that point it felt too heavy, and the strong soy flavor was killing my tropical buzz.

The best came last. In fact, it was the best thing I ate the entire time I was in D.C. Si Krong Muu, pork ribs with Mekhong whiskey and dill. I was surprised to see dill in a Thai dish, but a quick Googling revealed that northeastern Thailand does, in fact, use dill fairly often. The flavor was unreal.

Seriously. This has to be in my 10 top favorite things I've eaten this year. We were so full by the time they came, but still managed to polish these off. The meat, finished with a nice char, fell right off the bone. Like so many Thai dishes, the flavor was all over—sweet, sour, charred, bitter, herbaceous—but it's absolutely perfect. I thought I preferred my ribs smoked and slathered in BBQ sauce, but it turns out I was wrong.

The meal came to a close with these tiny glutinous rice squares topped with coconut cream and toasted sesame seeds, a perfect final note for the evening.

If you're an Asian food lover, Little Serow should be at the top of your list of places to go. Sure, you'll probably be eating dinner at 5:00pm like an elderly person, but it's well worth the sacrifice.

Stuff to eat. Mostly around St. Louis.

iNDO: Thai Street Food

Kitchen Kulture

Little Serow

Little Serow

1511 17th Street NW

Washington DC 20036

note@littleserow.com