som saa

Vying for the crown of London’s best Thai restaurant, amazing som saa continues to set pulses racing with its fiery regional food and lively warehouse setting. When we visited, the cavernous bare-brick interiors were heaving – packed out with second dates, City-boy outings and raucous thirty-something catch-ups all blissfully happy amid the noise and clatter.

With Andy Oliver and Mark Dobbie at the stoves, the cooking is also in-your-face: a riot of heat, sweet, sour and more heat that focuses on lesser-known Thai dishes. The duo set out their stall from the very start, whacking your taste buds with chilli-laden yum khamin khao (a prawn and peanut salad with fragrant white turmeric and ka-jorn flowers), followed by an equally spicy som tam salad zinging with lime and fresh tomatoes.

A dish of gai yang (grilled chicken leg with adroitly weighted sweet-sour tamarind dipping sauce) provides temporary respite from the heat, but it’s back to the fiery stuff for gutsy curries – perhaps a braised beef ‘yellow’ riff piqued with cucumber and chilli relish or sour stone bass with cha om omelette. For afters, squeeze in a grilled banana with salted palm-sugar ice cream if you have space.

To drink, cocktails classics are reimagined with hard-to-find Thai ingredients (imagine a ‘no-lime’ pisco sour mixed with betel leaf and cardamom foam), while an entire page of the wine list is given over to napalm-proof Rieslings. Note that Som Saa now takes bookings for parties of any size and has launched two new ‘tem toh’ (‘full table’) tasting menus for lunch and dinner.

Som Saa is a restaurant in Spitalfields that serves regional Thai food, made with exceptional talent, uncompromising flavours and presented with wonderful service.

The sample menu showcases the wonderful dishes that are on offer at Som Saa. Begin your meal with tua phrik krob, a dish of deep fried cashew nuts with makrut lime leaf and dried chilli, or the crispy chicken skin which is served with sriracha sauce. For bigger plates, enjoy the coconut cream relish of prawns and wild ginger served with fresh vegetables and herbs to dip, or the pad pak stiry fry of flourish farm greens and Asian mushrooms with garlic and oyster sauce. Meat eaters will love the five spice soy braised pork with fermented chilli sauce and a soy cured egg, or the northern style chicken laab with Thai herbs, spring onion and crispy shallots.

Then there's the set menu, known as the tem toh. The vegan and vegetarian tem toh menu begins with deep fried cashew nuts, before a salad of green mango, heart of palm and pennywort with a Thai chilli dressing. Next, the red curry of lotus root with tofu, chilli, apple, aubergine and Thai basil, topped with makrut lime life. A pad pak is the second main dish on the menu, served with sticky or jasmine rice. Finally, the salted palm sugar ice cream with turmeric grilled bananas.

The drinks menu is equally as tasty, with all drinks chosen to match the Thai food on offer in one way or another. Cocktails are made to order, and the bartenders love to use Thai ingredients and techniques in their mastery. Try the Maphraw Manhattan with coconut oil washed bourbon, punt e mes vermouth, maraschino, and orange bitters, for a bittersweet cocktail with vanilla undertones.