Kin Kao
903 Commercial Dr. | 604-558-1125 | KinKao.ca
Open Tuesday-Saturday, 11:30am-3pm and 5pm-10pm; Sunday, 11:30am-3pm.
I love Thai food. I love the wildly disparate flavours that somehow meld happily in each dish. The Thai culinary ethos is all about balance between the four elements of sweet, spicy, sour, and salty (Vietnamese cuisine adds in a fifth element, bitter). It is this ethos that allows ingredients like bird’s eye chilies, cilantro, lemongrass, fish paste and garlic to come together and make edible magic.
Vancouver has a fair share of decent Thai restaurants, with a few standouts. None of them offer anything as authentic as the food you’d get if you were in Thailand, but it’s pretty close and a lot of it is quite tasty. The latest addition to the scene, on Commercial Drive, is Kin Kao, the first child of two industry neophytes, Tang Phoonchai and Terence Feng. Coming, respectively, from a background in furniture and marketing doesn’t bode well for most restaurants, but, at first glance, this one is meeting the mark.
The room is spare and bright, all beech wood with light accents and white walls. I do cringe, however, when my drink is placed on the unfinished wood of the bar without a coaster. Keeping it from staining must be a nightmare. Perhaps random stains are the goal?
Service, run by Feng, is friendly and quick, and the stellar craft brews on the menu are perfect pairings for the food. Non-boozy drinks, like Thai iced tea, are pleasant and refreshing. The authentic version is made with condensed milk and sugar, and can be gratingly sweet. Kin Kao’s version is made with milk and is easier on the palate.
The food is reasonably priced. Starters are under $9, whether for lunch or dinner, and mains hover around $12-$15. Phoonchai, who runs the kitchen and bases his food on his grandmother’s recipes, has an excellent hand with the sauces and curries. His jaew, a traditional dipping sauce made from dried red chilies, toasted rice powder, shallots, garlic, cilantro, galangal, fish sauce, lime, and palm sugar, is excellent – complex heat with sweet and salty notes all in harmony. The jaew accompanies both the pork collar ($12) and the deep-fried pork belly ($8.50). The latter was less impressive. The belly was crispy and well-cooked, but the flavour was bland, despite the use of white pepper, garlic, fish sauce and soy, and the rice was tasteless.
Northeastern-style Thai steak salad was good. The steak was tender, thinly sliced and juicy, and the salad of mint and cilantro leaves, lemongrass and roasted crispy rice in a light dressing of soy, fish sauce and lime juice, was excellent. Duck in red curry was another winner, with sweet pineapple elements marrying nicely with squash and tender bamboo shoots.
Stir-fried eggplant with Thai basil (you can substitute chicken or pork as well) is a lacklustre dish, with stringy beans and one-dimensional heat. Chicken with rice noodles, tofu and bean sprouts, however, is excellent, studded with chilies, egg, crushed peanut, fish sauce and tamarind. It’s also one of the heartiest dishes on the menu. Dessert was middling. A choice of jackfruit or mango comes sliced over clumps of white sticky rice and lightly drizzled with coconut milk. The mango is fresh, which made it preferable, but not enough milk and too dry rice made for awkward mouthfuls.
Kin Kao will likely do well, and is busy most nights. If I was hungry and in the neighbourhood, there are a few dishes worth stopping in for, but I wouldn’t go out of my way.
All ratings out of five stars.
Food: ★★
Service: ★★★
Ambiance: ★★★
Value: ★★
Overall: ★★1/2
• Anya Levykh has been writing about all things ingestible for more than 10 years. Hear her every Monday on CBC Radio One’s On the Coast and find her on Twitter @foodgirlfriday and Facebook.com/FoodGirlFriday.
Star guide:
★: Okay, nothing memorable.
★★: Good, shows promise.
★★★: Very good, occasionally excellent.
★★★★: Excellent, consistently above average.
★★★★★: Awe-inspiring, practically perfect in every way.
