January 1, 2017
Khao San Thai Restaurant was chosen as one of the top 3 Thai Restaurants in Calgary.
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December 27, 2013
Calgary Uptown 17th Thai eatery provides escape from winter
By Bill Kaufmann, Calgary Sun |
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With Calgary’s December cold in its full frostiness outside, I was hoping in earnest not to be turned away.
Our impromptu arrival at Khao San had, as usual, been made without a reservation but our host ultimately took a chance he’d have enough Sunday night tables with the extra three of us.
The Thai eatery has been doing its thing for the past one-and-a-half years in the space once occupied by Jaro Blue and doesn’t look dramatically different, save for the absence of equine imagery.
Brown drapes cloak the walls, fronted by Asian relief panels.
Its menu is standard Thai fare, and prices sit at the high end of the genre.
Our first venture into it was the pla meuk yang, or marinated squid ($9).
Sliced into ringlets along with some tentacle action, this was seafood marinated in soya sauce and lemon grass, or so we were told.
It was a subtle seasoning, with the squid flavoured more from its grilling.
This was squid with a delightfully tender texture and accompanied by a wickedly spicy chili dip.
We liked it a lot.
Our hosts’ satay beef delivered four skewers of deliciously marinated meat in a delectable, lively peanut-coconut sauce ($8).
This was garnished with a tiny bowl of red onions and bell peppers steeped in sweet vinegar.
Mizue’s go-to Thai dish, the green curry, was a must and Khao San’s didn’t disappoint.
Theirs seemed extra milky and every bit as fragrant and herbally enhanced as you’d want, with plenty of soft chicken, cucumbers and green peppers ($16).
This we poured over spoonfuls of sweet jasmine rice ($2.25 for a small bowl).
We also summoned a plate of fried rice — ours with pork over beef, chicken, prawns or seafood ($13).
The pork was few and far between but this veggie-studded rice packed plenty of savoury flavour.
For a stir fry, the seafood with veggies version — including soft bamboo shoots — was well-infused with fresh basil and a soya-based sauce that imparted both spiciness and sweetness ($18).
And we loved our hosts’ pad Thai which came riddled with prawns and just the right amount of sweet stickiness among the noodles and peanutty crunch ($14).
Service throughout was fast, efficient and friendly, while our much-needed water was kept consistently topped up.
Khao San’s memorable fare had, for a time, banished the cold and kicked off our holiday season delectably.
Khao San Thai Kitchen
1314 17 Ave. S.W.
587-353-2668
3.5 stars
Hours:
Closed Mon.
11:30 a.m.- 2 p.m. & 5-9:30 p.m. (Tues.-Thurs.)
11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. & 5-10:30 p.m. (Fri.)
5 p.m.-10:30 p.m. (Sat.)
12 p.m.-9 p.m. (Sun.)
Dress: Casual
Main entree: Around $18
Liquor: Licensed
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September 19 - 25, 2013
Thai restaurants has the right mix
Khao San Thai Kitchen offers reasonably priced, authentic dishes
By Tara Mackinnon, Fast Forward Weekly
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 I was sad to see JaroBlue close last year and had almost forgotten about the new Thai restaurant that sprung up in its place.
Khao San Thai Kitchen is a fitting successor to JaroBlue. The décor has changed slightly, but not much. The only really big difference is on the walls. Gone are the beautiful images of wild horses, replaced with golden dragons and Thai art. If you loved JaroBlue’s charming crushed velvet banquettes and eclectic light fixtures, you’ll be happy to know they remain, and the ambience pairs well with the tasty Thai menu.
Partners Samphan Treeyachat and Rungroj Suntiwan own and operate Khao San Thai. Having worked together at Thai Sa-On, they have put their individual strengths in front-of-house and the kitchen to good use in their new venture.
After being welcomed and seated, my husband and I order a couple of cocktails. The list includes classics (nothing out of the ordinary) and a fairly basic beer and wine list.
The real treasures lie in the food menu, where we find a solid selection of appetizers, soups, salads, stir-fries, curries, seafood dishes and a great array of vegetarian entrée and salad options.
We decide to start with the corn fritters (four pieces, $7). Deep-fried to a golden brown, each fritter is chock full of kernels with just enough peppery batter to hold everything together in a flat cookie shape. Served with the house pineapple chile sauce, this is a light and flavourful take on a typically doughy snack.
Being the tofu fans that we are, we order the golden tofu (six pieces, $8). Like the fritters, the fried tofu (resembling sponge toffee) is remarkably light, and the roasted peanut sauce is the perfect accompaniment. The mix of sweet chili and peanuts is a great flavour enhancer.
Trying to decide on mains, we ask our server what she recommends and she is more than accommodating in helping us choose the right mix of dishes. Our first choice is one of Khao San Thai’s signature dishes, the braised short ribs in massaman curry ($21). Arriving in a shallow bowl, the dish features three large short ribs served on the bone in a pool of coconut milk with baby potatoes, onions and roasted peanuts. The beef is tender, flavourful and so tasty with our side coconut rice. We love the combination of textures.
Based on our server’s recommendation, we also get the basil stir-fry with prawn ($18, also available with chicken, pork or beef). This dish packs a nice spicy punch and is filled with fresh ingredients like onions, bamboo shoots, crushed chili, Thai basil leaves, carrots and green peppers. The dish is a great complement to the massaman beef.
For dessert, we debate trying the taro pearls in sweetened coconut milk ($5) or the sticky rice with fresh mango ($5). Even though I’m not quite sure I can eat any more rice, we go with our server’s recommendation of the sticky rice. She doesn’t steer us wrong. Served in four small cakes, the rice is sweetened with coconut milk and palm sugar. Each square is then topped with fresh mango, coconut milk and sesame seeds. The earthiness from the seeds is the perfect topping to this delicately sweet dessert — it’s a tasty end to a lovely meal.
I’ll definitely be back to Khao San Thai. The food is reasonably priced and authentically crafted, the service is warm, helpful and attentive, and the “recycled” ambience makes for a perfectly intimate date night or group outing. It’s the right mix of everything I love.
Khao San Thai is located at 1314 17 Ave. S.W., 587-353-2668. |
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February 21, 2013
Khao San Thai Kitchen
By Kathy Richardier, Swerve |
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The food at Khao San consists of exciting, contemporary versions of Thai favourites.
Photograph by: Colleen De Neve/Calgary Herald , Swerve.
The Man and I used to hang out at the JAROBlue restaurant bar yakking with our barkeep friend Travis Whitney. After a good run of five years, JARO closed, Travis went off to Candela, and we were sad.
However, after a super meal at Khao San Thai Kitchen, the new restaurant in the JAROBlue space, we’re not sad, we’re happy. There’s nothing like good food found to take the place of good food lost. And we’re not the only ones who know this. For a relatively new restaurant, Khao San was abuzz with happy diners on a Sunday eve.
The owners are alumni of the venerable Thai Sa-On, so you know you’re going to find food that will make you smile. I even heard The Man sigh happily while eating the braised short ribs in massaman curry ($21). The big meaty ribs were fork tender, the curry full of sumptuous flavour, with just a touch of heat so that The Man declared, “It wakes me up, but doesn’t frighten me.” That says a lot about the food.
“Sumptuous” was a word that sprang to mind a lot while eating this elegant, satisfying fare. The curries are mouthfuls of flavour, but they’re not spiked with wee, fiery chilies that blow the top of your head off as in other Thai food we’ve had.
The panang curry with pork ($16) was another seductive dish, as was a more unusual dish not regularly found in our Thai eating experiences. Khao soi gai consists of noodles and chicken in a soupy yellow curry coconut milk broth jazzed up with kaffir lime leaves. Topped with fried noodle “hair,” it’s served with hot sauce and pickled cabbage, shallots and lime on the side ($16). Perfect!
But before we were seduced by Thai curries we started our meal with a fresh tongue-tingling green papaya salad topped with plump prawns ($12) and just enough chilies in the dressing. Corn fritters, packed with kernels, reminded us of pralines, because they were fried to a sweet caramelization around the edges ($7). Mmmm. Seared scallops arrived presented on Chinese spoons atop a bright tasting pineapple cucumber salsa shot through with lime ($12). More mmmm.
But perhaps the best of the beginnings was the grilled lemongrass squid ($9), presented whole and full of the smoky grilled flavour we all love. The spicy seafood sauce served on the side for dipping is a nice complement.
This is really exciting, interesting food, much of it contemporary presentations of familiar Thai fare. We really appreciated that the dishes didn’t have fiery chilies lurking in them. If you wanted, you could turn up the temperature with chili oil on the side.
But we weren’t finished yet. Patties of warm, sweet sticky rice are presented with an eggy custard on top ($5) to pop into your happy mouth. Most fun of all is a young coconut—meat intact, water and pulp semi-frozen—served with a straw and a spoon to scoop the coconut off the sides of the shell ($7). This’ll keep you busy for a while as you enjoy the good coffee.
1314 17th Ave. S.W., 587-353-2668, khaosanthaikitchen.ca. © Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald |
August 28, 2012
New Restaurant: Khao San
by John Gilchrist |
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This elegant Thai restaurant adds more dimension to the rich 17th Avenue dining scene.
Red chicken curry is a classic Thai dish where the heat is balanced with cool coconut milk.
Where once wild horses roamed, now golden Thai dragons dwell. JaroBlue, the lively, 17th Avenue tapas bar, has gone away and in its place is the new Khao San Thai Kitchen.
Khao San Thai Kitchen seats 45 people and also has a small, cozy patio out front.
JaroBlue was a sleek, stylish, narrow place where huge photos of wild Sable Island horses covered the walls. When JaroBlue closed shop, they took the horses with them but left most everything else. So Samphan Treeyachat and Rungroj Suntiwan replaced them with murals of jewelled, golden dragons frolicking on a black background.
Tom Yam soup with prawns
Treeyachat and Suntiwan, both of whom hail from northeastern Thailand, met while working at the venerable Thai Sa-On, a classic Thai restaurant in the Beltline. Treeyachat handled service while Suntiwan took care of kitchen business. A few years later, they found themselves working together at the Calgary Golf & Country Club and began talking about their own restaurant. So when the opportunity arose, they took it.
Pad Thai
Khao San offers a Thailand-wide menu of lively soups (Tom Yam) and salads (Som Tum), curries (red, green, yellow and Panang), noodles (pad Thai) and on and on, most of which are available with meats or seafood or as vegetarian options. But one dish jumped out on my first visit to Khao San — the khao soi.
(Brief diversion: khao san means “milled rice” in Thai and indicates the importance of rice in Thai cuisine. Khao soi means “cut rice” which is used to make dough for noodles. It is also a dish that is served mostly in northern Thailand, especially in Chiang Mai.)
Sweet and sour prawns
Khao San’s khao soi is a creamy, curry-and chili-infused coconut broth that by itself is addictive. It’s loaded with noodles, both fresh and crispy-fried, and served with pickled cabbage, fresh shallots and lime and chili oil. A squeeze of lime, a spoonful of shallots and pickles and the khao soi is filled with bright flavours and textures. Slices of chicken breast and a whole chicken thigh add a light meatiness to the dish but caution, only serious hotheads need the extra blast of chili oil. This is an outstanding, richly flavoured soup.
Rainbow fruit salad
In contrast, the shrimp salad rolls are an exercise in delicate flavours and textures. Thin rice pancakes are rolled around crunchy shrimp, fresh greens and soft vermicelli. They come with a sweet chili sauce, quite different from the salty nuoc mam served with Vietnamese salad rolls. As different as dragons are from horses. |
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