Thai food, we all love it and I used to eat pad thai by the truck full for dinner. While take-out Thai will always have a spot in my heart, true authentic food it is not. For real authentic Thai food that hits you in the face with flavor and spice you usually to have to trek out to Queens or Red Hook to go to Pok Pok but luckily Fish Cheeks fills that gap in the city.
I actually went for lunch on a random Saturday and as a warning their lunch menu while delicious is quite limiting. The dinner menu isn't really any bigger but if don't have your heart set on a specific dish, going for lunch is a nice intro to the place. The space itself is beautiful - spacious, bright and colorful, it actually reminded me more of a Caribbean restaurant than a Thai restaurant. As I mentioned the lunch menu is small - 3 noodle dishes or 5 rice dishes. If you're a vegetarian or don't eat seafood, don't even bother, there is nothing you can eat here. But if you do eat seafood and or meat, everything looked amazing. Since it was such a freezing cold day, I opted for the Senn Lek Tom Yum Noodle dish ($16) and Lily got the crab fried rice with egg ($18) and we got a side of pork belly ($8).
When I hear pork belly I usually think of BBQ, so I had no idea what to think when we ordered a side of pork belly but it turned out to be amazing and delicious. It's mostly focused on the crispy skin and the beautiful fatty meat underneath but in small bite sized pieces and it's served with intense green chili dipping sauce. I could have popped 100 of them in my mouth. The tom yum noodle soup was served in a spicy lemongrass broth and topped with mussels, shrimp, squid, soft boiled egg, cilantro, galangal and thin rice noodles. It punched you in the face with intensity and flavor which I loved. Lily and I switched off and I tried the crab fried rice and it was packed with huge chunks of fresh crab meat and prik nam pla which is a delicious Thai sauce consisting of chilies, fish sauce, lime and brown sugar. I would take that sauce and pretty much coat it on everything I could eat if I could. I had come to lunch with a slight cold but all the heat of the chili really cleansed my nasal system quickly. We saved room for dessert and got the key lime pie (I know, not very Thai) and it was fabulous - super tart with a nice graham cracker crust.
Before I wrote this I read Pete Wells' review on this place and while he didn't love it as much as I did he did write that "It’s not a groundbreaking restaurant; it simply cooks the way I wish more Thai kitchens did" and I would whole-heartedly agree with him on that. While there is always a need for your mom and pop Thai take out with your pad thai and curries, I wished there were more places like this that didn't require a trip to Queens. Total bill: $36/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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