Stephen Cook

Review of NARI San Francisco Bay Area

Classiest Thai place in SF, very upscale establish...

Classiest Thai place in SF, very upscale establishment, ambiance, and service. A lot of people bring dates here.

They have a lot of very authentic, hard to find dishes (even in Thailand), the old recipe and dishes from the palace. Their desserts are modern and new creations though.

My favorite snack is the crispy veal sweetbreads, this is similar to Khin Kao's famous wings with fresh thai chilis, sriracha, and tamarind sauce coated. Super umami rich oozing flavor. For starters, get the squid & pork jowl, it comes with yum sauce (lime, chili, fish sauce, herbs), super soft pork jowl and squid tentacles. I also enjoyed the khao tung & ngob. Ngob is red curry with seafood and you dip it with khao tung (thai rice crispy).

For the main dishes, I love their gaeng kua mussels, the mussels are huge and soft, not stringy and overcooked. The gaeng ranjuan beef tom saap like soup was also a nice balance, one order of $14 is enough to share.

We tried most of their desserts and our favorite was dream of lod chong. Lod chong is usually green pandan noodle dessert in coconut milk. Nari changed it into the ice cream parfait with all of the lod chong flavors. Amazing and unique!