It just fell into my laap

The cult treatment of Thai restaurants in big cities

For a couple of years now I’ve been recommending Singburi(_e11) to quite a few people despite having never been; the kinds of things I read about it from the kinds of people who have good authority on London’s food scene made me confident that it would be a great shout. Mostly, I thought it was a proper suggestion because I knew that none of my central captive acquaintances would venture to Leytonstone, break their phones trying to get a reservation, and most of all absolutely not show up at the two reservation times they offer (6.30 and 8.45) and chance that they get a walk-in based on a booking that someone else flaked on. When I posted a blurry but instantly recognizable photo of the specials, a friend said this was the furthest East I’ve ever been (“In London…”).

I took the Elizabeth to Maryland and then got on and then off a bus to get some cash before walking up to the café. I had a tote with a large plastic bag in it, in case I had to takeaway the food, if there were no seats available. Singburi was fresh off a National Restaurant Awards Top 75 ranking, and I wondered how much this would increase the popularity of an already extremely popular place (rankings are interesting conversation pieces above all else, especially re: the other London and Thai spots on the most recent list). Despite having an essentially nonexistent booking system (not to belabour this point…*groans*), the things you can read about Singburi show that it has the ability to create a fevered loyalty among the people that manage to eat there, a kind of loyalty much larger and more intentionally strategized marketing teams dream of generating. Meedu Saad, Ixta Belfrage, Jonathan Nunn, Ruby Tandoh, Feroz Gaija, Angela Hui, among about 27,4000 other people seem to be big fans.

At the door was a tiny Desi woman (and her not-Desi dining companion) screeching at the man guarding the tables, I immediately thought this was what the restaurant awards have done. This middle-aged Sobo girl was trying to flout the very publicly known reserve-or-show-up-at-the-two-reservation-times system and was demanding some sort of shortcut by providing inane loophole suggestions. “Can I ask a question? Just give me a portion of what any other table orders, just make two of them” “OK, can I please just have two things? A curry, a salad, and a fish. Please.” This went on for quite a while until they left, deciding to return in an hour when the next reservation slot would start. I had been waiting at the door this entire time, reading Olga Ravn, and accruing food-commentator manna at an alarming rate. Suddenly, seemingly 20 people, all in various degrees of mullet and New Balance and jubilee bracelet showed up and were waiting to be seated for their called-ahead slots. The beady-eyed witch saw me from across the street and zoomed past me, straight into an empty table-for-two. I was dumbfounded but also seriously amused that someone who seemingly shouldn’t care so much about definitely eating at a specific restaurant would put in this much effort. I waited to see what would happen for me, and rather than the earlier mentioned victim, who I thought was pretending to be hard of hearing so She would stop shrieking, someone’s mother came and sat me at a four top, with two teachers I didn’t know, teaching Classics and Psychology.

I finally saw the famous blackboard, and talked non-stop at the teachers about how the Thinking Person would only ever order from it, particularly the clams, then everything else, and some things probably two or three times. I might have even given back all the print menus to the not-deaf man, who was calling me Robot, because of the summary of The Employees I narrated to him while waiting for it to become 8.45pm. I didn’t believe that the salted fish rice would be what you get at MacKenzie Rex or Selera, almost exactly hawker style.

The kai toon/khai dtun with trout roe, a whole small prawn, and what seemed like sliced matsutake, was barely set and beautiful. Did the demon Aunty know that, just like at Koya, the blackboard specials were the horses to bet on? Did anyone else know that this blackboard was not the two-som-tams blackboard at Som Saa (no matter how good the deep-fried sea bass is, main menu). Was someone at risk of ordering a pad thai? Maybe I should stand up and make an announcement. Did everyone have enough water? I think everything here is going to be spicer than it ever is in Spitalfiends.

The evening progressed, and the table next to me, a real set of regulars by the look and sound of it - had photos of them on the wall behind us. I told one lady she looked like Lea Seydoux and she gave me an endearing handshake (but the twee kind, where you only grasp someone’s fingers), as I left, with my bag of squid and bamboo shoot stir-fry, a laminated menu order for those at home, a punishment for not putting the time in. I think the tin-foil takeaway box melted the plastic bag I was carrying it in, and Thai basil and chilli padi juice started leaking onto the already stained tote.

Kiln doesn’t write-up their daily specials, they just print them out on the menus. For all the times I have been there, I have never taken a menu home, maybe a subliminal knowing that I would be back the following week, or the week after that. I wonder if Meedu reads through Singburi’s chalkboards. Delineating himself from the Plaza Khaos and Speedboats by putting shrimp paste relish and raw vegetables on his menu instead of Mamee noodles and pineapple McPie. I wish, for the family atmosphere, and people giving me funny nicknames, that Singburi was my local instead of Kiln - that rather than old-school hip-hop on vinyl and Sevenrooms, I could see Sweet Mystery and Bushy, Juicy on a bi-weekly basis, rather than listening to things that sound like they would have the same album name. I think Singburi would remember that I never have the tamworth with the glass noodles, but I repeat this request every time on Brewer street. Kiln’s bookshelf at the leftside of the upstairs dining room reminded me that I had thai food at home, and I should read it cover to cover.

One of the years after 2015 but before 2019, I was visiting New York, armed with lots of Eater and Michelin reading, and maybe I started to know who Pete Wells was. I was determined to go to the then 1*, the now closed, Uncle Boons. No reservations, wait at the bar and see what happens. I took my heavily pregnant cousin, and we sweat and cried and leaked our noses onto the bar - eating stand-up and being elbowed in the back, as if everyone knew the place was going to close soon. A couple of years later the ‘enormously appealing’ Thai Diner in full kitsch regalia would open in NoLita, next to things I enjoyed a lot like Pasquale Jones, Happy Bones, Noah, ALD, and the stylish Nom Wah. Ann Redding grew up in Maryland, the purple line stop for Singburi. Every Thai restaurant seems to have old-ish photos of people on the walls.

“AR..was thrilled the day she saw an old man plop down at the counter with a newspaper. “I was like, It’s official, we’re a diner!” she says. Thai Diner mashes up diner eating with Thai food, serving traditional dishes like tom yum soup next to fries smothered in massaman curry. “We’re not doing anything really groundbreaking here,” she says. “We’re just taking the cuisine and my heritage, and just applying it to that model that seems to have worked for so long.”

I didn’t have any, but I remember seeing lots of vegan Thai restaurants in LA, and not-necessarily-vegan Thai restaurants in Portland - someone mentioned the Global Thai program and I wondered whether Laang Baan was a product of this scheme. NIGHT+MARKET certainly wasn’t, no matter how many LA-cool-guys are going there. I wish I went to Sanamluang.

At Edinburgh, everyone doing an arts and/or humanities degree would be at the 10-year old Ting Thai Caravan quite often, getting the khao mun gai tod (did we ever decide on whether mispronouncing ethnic names as they are written on the menu is better or worse than describing the dish using the ingredients that are in it?), and various smallplatepickybits. There was only 1 when I was at Edinburgh, and maybe another kind of southeast Asian street-food concept by the same group in the same design philosophy, there are now 4 TTC’s across Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Odd bits:

Golden Mile Complex is Singapore’s indoor Khao San Road, Thai ground zero. Replete with seedy siam dius, supermarkets selling red and green Cha Tra Mue, and checkerboarded laminate tables that Lukie took lots of photos of before returning to invent ‘curry over rice’ plaza.

GMP

PKG

At ‘a new type of gathering place, a green social club in the city, which brings people together to eat, drink and have fun - all whilst striving to have a positive impact on the planet’ AngloThai will be popping up in July, as if we needed yet another Thai-inspired restaurant using seasonal British ingredients. Kin+Deum-core.

Everyone knows Mark Wiens I’m sure - he’ll convince you to get a hulking pestle and mortar if you don’t have one already.

The most popular ‘eating out’ cuisine in Chennai among my extended family seems to be ASEAN - Mamagoto, Pandan Club, PaPaYa, Benjarong, Cafe de Bangkok, Chap Chay, Soy Soi, Abang Raju’s Nasi goreng, Nasi and Mee - all kind of pleasantly upper middling places with prawn tom-yum and chicken satay and coconut-puddings. None are bad - some are particularly great actually - like Abang Raju with his capsiacin injected squid starters and perfectly bullseyed kai-dow.