101 Thai Kitchen: GDBK's vote for Best Thai Restaurant in London
Feb 25, 2011
The more educated a non-Thai person’s taste becomes regarding Thai food, the more difficult it is to find a truly superb Thai restaurant outside of Thailand itself, and this is especially true for those of us who satisfy the urge for Thai flavors by cooking authentic Thai at home. So it’s with great fanfare that we unveil a truly outstanding Thai restaurant in London—hell, we’ll just say the best Thai restaurant in London.
101 Thai Kitchen on King Street in Chiswick is a casual pink-and-yellow painted space (the favorite colors of the Thai monarchs) with portraits of their majesties on the walls and—check one!— that ultimate sign of authenticity in a Thai restaurant, a flat-screen TV tuned to a Thai channel.
Check two: The booze offerings include the cult Thai whiskey Mekong, made with herbs and tasting more like a dark rum. Thais drink it with Coke and ice or mixed with energy drinks like Carabao Daeng (with a longhorn skull logo), strong Thai Red Bull or M-150. The menu warns against having more than two of these caffeine-bombs per day. 101 also serves a popular (and strong) Thai beer, Chang. Drinks, as they should, come with prawn crackers. And, ok, we can't resist, here's a YouTube video of a Carabao Dang ad:
The true test of a Thai restaurant kitchen however is that ubiquitous and usually blah dish, Tom Yum soup. This hot-and-sour broth with shrimp is a throwaway on most Thai menus, but the reason it’s invariably on the menu is that it’s one of the most spectacular dishes in the Thai repetoire when done right. The best tom yum we’ve personally ever consumed was in Bangkok at Chote Chitr (see the NYT review here)— it was so flavorful and dense we mistook it for a stock-based curry and ate it over rice. 101 Kitchen’s Tom Yum was nearly as sublime, with a great balance of hot, sour, salty and sweet flavors and a deep density from plenty of rich chili oil. In addition to regular ingredients, it contained mushrooms in addition to the usual straw mushrooms and diced long beans. Another big issue with Tom Yum is getting the shrimp very fresh and just barely cooked correctly, and 101 Thai Kitchen pulled it off.
Som Tom Korat (unripe papaya salad) is another test dish for us. Unlike Tom Yum, but like pizza—and sex as the old saying goes—even when Som Tom is bad, it’s pretty good. This one, however, was superb, a thatch of shredded papaya served with dried shrimp, salted crab, and pickled fish sauce. It was fiery and, in our dining companion’s words, ‘gutsy’. The salted crab was not from a jar (which is common), but rather was home-made from small soft-shell crabs boiled with fish sauce. The crab is finely chopped, but you still get crunchy bits of shell. Another enjoyable crunchy bit is tiny slices of lime, soaked in the salad juices. To do it traditional Isaan style, order Som Tom with Gai Yang (Thai BBQ chicken) and sticky rice.
Everything else we tried was similarly authentic and spectacular. Massamun curry with chicken and baby potatoes came sprinkled with toasted coconut and had a welcome hint of sourness. The mango ice cream with sticky rice came with white bread and also was lime-spiked and not too sweet. A few other menu highlights: corn cakes, Isaan sausage, BBQ chicken, deep fried fermented sour pork ribs, spicy frog legs, Kua Gling (very spicy stir-fried minced chicken or beef with fresh peppercorn and lime-leaves), sour prawn curry, prawn with (the very strange) sator bean, and Kwai Teow Pad (fried flat noodles with egg).
The restaurant is located on King Street on the border of Hammersmith and Chiswick in West London (Stamford Brook on the District line is the nearest tube stop). 101 Thai Kitchen, 352 King Street, Hammersmith, London W6 0RX, 0208 746 6888. A couple blocks down King Street, there is a good Vietnamese place called Saigon and a Thai supermarket Thai Smile.
