Since I moved back to New York two years ago, there’s one restaurant that comes up again and again as one of the most beloved restaurants in the city and that’s Thai Diner.
Located on a highly-trafficked block in the Lower East Side (especially on a Friday night), Thai Diner looks a bit like a Tiki hut or something you might find near a beach. The outside doesn’t do justice to what you’ll find on the inside.
Thai Diner serves some of the most exciting food in the city and it’s not just because it’s zippy and packed with ingredients like Thai chilies and lemongrass.
What makes Thai Diner’s food so compelling is that it is the city: specifically the immigrant cultures that define its history. That dish you see above was a Thai chopped liver that I ate with Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman back in 2021.
As someone who grew up loving the chopped liver you’d get from a deli (my grandmother always warned me away from it; “it’s an organ meat!” she’d declare, though I still have no idea what she meant by that) this one blew me away. It has fried vermicelli noodles, peanuts, herbs, pineapple, and it’s served with warm roti. I still think about it four years later.
But the dish that totally has me gagging (in a good way!) is their stuffed cabbage.
I grew up eating stuffed cabbage dense with ground beef and floating in a thin tomato sauce. This one takes the original and gives it a makeover worthy of Olivia Newton John at the end of Grease: it has galangal and makrut lime and turkey and mushrooms and coconut milk and is served with a spicy chili Nam Jim. I ate this yesterday after a haircut and felt like I’d died and gone to Thai Jewish heaven.
The only time I’ve been disappointed in a meal at Thai Diner is when I ordered a straightforward Thai dish; in this case, their Phat See Ew with chicken which was totally fine, no complaints, only it tasted a lot like a Phat See Ew you could get anywhere else:
My advice is to avoid the classics and to focus on the strangest, most unexpected things you can pick out on the menu.
I ordered that Phat See Ew at lunch with my friend James who insisted we get the Strawberry Chrysanthemum Monster for dessert. And boy am I glad we did!
That goofy little face hides a strawberry chiffon cake with chrysanthemum whipped cream and strawberry and chrysanthemum jellies. It tells you everything you need to know about Thai Diner: it’s whimsical but expertly made. No wonder the restaurant remains such a beloved fixture of the NYC dining scene.
Thai Diner / 186 Mott St, New York, NY 10012 / (646) 559-4140
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