Review: Khao Bird, Soho

Lots of lovely new Thai openings in London recently. Khao Bird is a northern Thai casual eatery that has come up from Brighton, where they started a few years ago as Lucky Khao. Inside is just the kind of bare-brick interior with metal-topped tables and simple chairs you’d expect from a modern Soho eatery. Some nice pops of red neon to remind you that you’re (culinarily) in Thailand!

We went with a fermented tea leaf salad (via Burma), mutton fries, beef and campari larb, a herbal squash curry and Chiang Mai barbecued chicken. The fermented tea leaf salad was a nice muddle of stuff, the slightly funky whiff of the fermented leaves coming through, though the overall effect was also a bit of a muddle of flavour and texture. Mutton fries were just that: chips topped with shredded mutton. The mutton was full-flavoured meat and sticky with spice, the chips were very crisp but also very oily. Tasty filth, though, and I reckon they’d see this as a signature dish!

The larb was a change in texture and full of punch, albeit I couldn’t really detect Campari specifically. Scooped up with big prawn crackers, there was nothing wrong here. Nothing specifically wrong with the barbecued chicken either, a very tasty piece with lovely sticky-fried skin. I must admit the dipping sauces did nothing for me; a bit sour, with hard to determine flavours. The squash curry was great, though, with the surprising and powerful flavour of roses coming beautifully out of the coconut-y curry with just enough chilli heat to be delicious.

Khao Bird serves up a perfectly decent mix of modern Thai cooking. At somewhere around £30 each before drinks for a decent sized meal, it’s good value too. That said, the dishes weren’t quite as top-notch as some other Thai options we love in London. Won’t disappoint, though.