How great is it having friends all over the world? SW and his girlfriend A are always super fun to hang out with when we’re in London. This time we decided to check out Spitalfields, which we hadn’t been to much before, and A recommended this amazing Thai restaurant called Som Saa. We loved it!
It is customary in Asian cuisine to share the food, therefore Som Saa had a sharing menu. Eating in a bigger group means you can always order more, so I must say we really feasted that night! The restaurant was packed (always a good sign!) and following some drinks, we got a cute, booth table and tucked into our food.
The menu is divided into sections; Grill, Soup, Wok, Salads, Curry + Dessert. I think the recommendation is to get something from each section, but we didn’t fancy anything from the Grill or Soup section (plus my lack of chilli eating ability didn’t help…).
First, from the wok section, we got the Nahm dtok pla thort – whole deep fried seabass with roasted rice powder and isaan herbs (£16.50) which was perhaps the most impressive-looking dish for them all. The entire fish was fried and presented in this upright fashion – a little bit intimidating. It was ridiculously tasty though. Crispy skinned fish is amazing!
We also got the Pad pak – stir fried english and asian vegetables (£8) which was weirdly spicy. I remember all of us tucking in (coz we all love our vegetables!) and being like, woah! That’s unexpected! We downed a lot of water that night.
From the Salads section we got Som tam thai – bangkok style green papaya salad with snake beans, dried shrimp, peanuts and cherry tomatoes (£9.50). Everyone else seemed to like it, although I wasn’t a huge fan. I just don’t get green papaya – I don’t like papaya even when it’s not green, so this is just weird!
We also got the Yum makeua yao – grilled long aubergine salad with egg and prawn floss (£9) and wow! This was delicious! An unexpected highlight was definitely the smoky taste in the eggplant.
Finally, we got the Neua Parlow – five spice soy braised beef cheek with chilli vinegar sauce (£14) from the Curry section of the menu, which, in my opinion, wasn’t really a curry. It wasn’t spicy at all, and in addition to that, the beef was ridiculously tender that I considered ordering a second dish! The sauce was also amazing, the perfect topping on the white rice we got.
crispy shallots
On to desserts! There were only 2 on the menu so we were curious to try them both. The Kluey yaang ‘ice cream’ nahm dan beep – salted palm sugar ice cream with turmeric grilled banana (£5) was first up, which we all looooved. Grilled banana – what’s not to love? And the salted palm sugar ice cream was pretty much the Asian answer to salted caramel. Highly recommend this!
Finally, we had the Kanom mor gaeng fuk thong – duck egg and pumpkin custard with poached jackfruit and crispy shallots (£5), first up with SW’s watch as a prop because that was his contribution to ‘food blogging’. Very funny. We were a little bit more skeptical about this dessert. Pumpkin custard? Crispy shallots on a dessert?! It was actually pretty good, perhaps similar to a Thai answer to creme brulee…but I definitely preferred the first one.
Seriously, though, Som Saa really impressed us. Living in Australia I tend to equate Thai food with your local $10 Newtown Thai restaurant, but this was another level. Also does anyone else think these prices are ridiculously good?! Dessert was the equivalent of $8! I would come back here any day, and of course highly recommend it to anyone living or travelling to London!
Som Saa
43a Commercial Street
Spitalfields, London
E1 6BD
http://www.somsaa.com/
