Kin Khao (1 Michelin Star restaurant) Reviews

Very average for and way over-priced with average service.

Lots of people. Michelin 1 star. When I ate it with a cocktail, it cost nearly $100, including tip, but it was the most delicious food I ate in this city so far, including my last trip. Among them, sticky rice was delicious! It was just rice, but it was sticky like the name, so it seemed to eat rice cakes, and I gave it to the big air, but I ate almost all. The rest wasn't a special taste, but it harmonized well with the atmosphere so I ate very pleasantly.

Nice food, not easy to find the location of this place.

I had the Gai Tom, garlic rice and steamed chicken. It was delicious. Oh my God melt in your mouth chicken with delicious garlic rice to boot!

Delicious. Inventive take on Thai food from a creative chef. They also have great cocktails. I recommend the ribs, rabbit curry and the crab noodles. They also open late which makes this the best late night night place. The restaurant is located in the lobby of Parc 55.

Fantastic, the pork belly was a religious experience.

Such a great meal here. The papaya salad was so delicious. They had pretty authentic Thai flavours and dishes. They were very cautious on spice level for those who are worried about that. I love everything spicy so the Chiles on the side were a great touch. Fried chicken sandwich was a happy surprise. One of our favourite meals this trip to San Francisco. Would go back in a heartbeat.

Doesn't get better than this... A well deserved Michelin star .

Know KS it out of the park pretty hot wings d pork belly with themazsaman curry yes please.

Fast, friendly, and professional. My phone is like new again and I wasn't sold unnecessary repairs. Really pleased! Again!!! I don't know what's wrong with me but this is the third time in a year and a half. My phone is like brand new. Again.

I didn't know this place is a Michelin one star restaurant when I decided to go. To be honest I was disappointed at the food, it's not bad, but very mediocre thai food...I went for lunch and tried the chicken fat rice. Surprisingly their thai iced coffee is really good, they can put condensed milk on the side so you can enjoy the pure cold brewed coffee & the one mixed with condensed milk.

Delicious and fresh Thai food hidden a few steps from Union Square in San Francisco. Love the bean lettuce wraps and spicy vegetarian curry. Service is fast and attentive.

It's so so. I expected too much and the price is a little bit expensive.

Service was good but food was mediocre, overly salty and not unique Thai cuisine. Very noisy, we were sat next to the discharge washing area, just hearing clinking of cutlery.

midst authentic and delicious Thai food in San Francisco

Upscale Thai in the heart of downtown. Food is an explosion of flavors

Food is not as expensive as one Michelin star might make you think. But everything is good.

TL;DR: Not a good option for one person. Unwarranted one star rating for food.
Food: salt bomb
Service: comically bad
Atmosphere: awkward and cold - literally

I was staying at the hotel so I was surprised to see a Michelin rated restaurant in the same vicinity. That being said I m surprised they got a star...fat tire man you disappoint

I thought the decor was plain but cute with the postcards. Washrooms are located in the hotel lobby so you ll need ask for a hotel card.

I ate alone and was seated at a communal table. They probably should have just seated us at the bar. Or asked if if we wanted to wait for it? It was very awkward since we were all squeezed in. You had no where to look but your phone if you want to avoid eye contact. Also awkward when the other customers angrily pay their bill (somehow that one person racked up a bill worth for at least two people). I don t think anyone was happy from their conversation. Mostly about the about the service. Like I said we were sitting close. Not a good start. For context I live in nyc so I know squashed seating but this seems like a poorly managed front of house issue.

The menu is family style so there are no options for one person. In hindsight I should have just gotten the 20$ stir fried noodle dish (the only true stand alone dish). I wanted to try something different since it had a 1 star rating so I asked for a recommendations. The squid dish and sticky rice side recommended by the waiter.
I realized that was a weird combination once I got the food. The squid dish was just too salty. The sauce had fish sauce, lime, peanuts and cilantro, and sugar, but there was no balance and all you tasted was a salt bomb. That did not go well with the dry sticky rice since it s a cold dish. It would make more sense to pair that with the curry dish. I also ordered chicken broth to help me eat it.

Halfway through my meal, I was asked to move seats since everybody else finished before me. That could have been avoided if I was just seated there in the first place? For context it wasn t a particularly busy night either.

I also ordered black pudding dessert (recommended by a lot of the reviews) since I wanted to at least give it another chance, unfortunately the the bananas were underripe and you could tell even with all the coconut and black pudding/caramel sauce.

On two occasion I prompted for the cheque. I waited more than 15 minutes, so I just got up and asked for the cheque at the front. The waiter informed me that he comped me for the dessert. The other waiter commented how the service was bad that night. I guess I was unlucky and went at bad time.

Great food. On the pricey side for cheap decor and ambiance.

Outstanding food, friendly service, creative cocktails. What's not to like? Well, the restrooms are a bit of a hike (in the hotel lobby, and you'll need a key card to get in), but that feels like quibbling. Don't let it scare you away from one of the best restaurants in the area.

Had a craving for Thai tonight and stumbled on this restaurant just around the corner. Despite the hour wait, the food was worth every penny. The aromas from the rabbit with green curry fills your sensation even before it enters the mouth. The rich flavour develops richly as soon as it hits your palette. Our other main dish was the pork belly; four generous slices that dissolves into sweet oblivion. Simply perfection. Service was awesome, and atmosphere/decor was quite cozy.

Great take on Thai cuisine. I recommend the wings and curry noodles!

Busy little place with great food. We didn't have a reservation, but the staff managed to squeeze us in with little wait.

Always worth it. Everything on their menu is delicious. Reserve in advance.

All the local guides who gave great reviews: aren't you shameful that you are not speaking the truth just because the restaurant paid you to do that? For a city that has good reputation for food, I've got to say this one is bad and overpriced. Very salty food as if the chef were not trained. I would say that a random Thai to go place across from my house does a better job than this one. Things that are supposed to be light are salty, things that are supposed to be a bit sweet is also salty. Furthermore, the service was bad and the waitress was extremely arrogant as if everyone had to beg them to eat in their restaurant. I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone, and in fact I wonder if all the positive reviews were just posted by the friends of the restaurant owner. Environment was also loud and sitting was limited. If you don't want to waste your money, then you don't come here.

This restaurant is super popular here. We arrived at about 8pm (which is already pretty late for dinner) but still had to wait for over 1 hour to get a seat for two people. As for the experience here, I have to say, this is indeed a decent place to have dinner with friends, but if u have some other high-level expectation because of the Michelin star, I would say there is a high probability that u would be disappointed. The restaurant is quite noisy, so I would never recommend this to u if u have requirements for quietness or privacy. The food here is quite tasty but unfortunately also might not be friendly to Thai beginners. But I have to say, the service here is really great. I left my backpack there after I finished the dinner. Luckily the manager found my contact and called me in a short time before I left the downtown area. Thanks to her a lot!

Great food and atmosphere. I've been here a few times and love that they customize the food to my vegan needs. I highly recommend the Drunken Noodles.

Go. For a date, for a group, on your own.

This has been on my list for a while, and I deeply regret not trying it earlier. Had a truly amazing meal here. The often suspicious hyperbole of other reviewers was warranted. I hadn't realized they had a Michelin star, but I'm not surprised. It's not budget Thai food certainly, but it's very accessible in SF terms, especially for the quality.

I took another reviewer's advice and opted for the friends and family menu, as I was dining on my own. It was a lot of food, but absolutely the right decision. You to try a number of very different and all expertly made dishes. Every dish was uniquely flavourful and a little unexpected. The meat dishes were melt in your mouth, perfectly prepared. I had absolutely no room left for dessert, which I ate all of.

The cocktails are not to be overlooked either. Inventive, unusual (a Thai themed cocktail with Genever was excellent), well-crafted drinks. Quentin at the bar was great and gave me an education in local (and some non local) gins.

Right ingredients, but not quite authentic. Great service though. I tried their food today.

Overall very positive experience. We were a table of four and really enjoyed the food sharing concept. Get the Penang Curry, it's delicious (and very spicy!)!

Fantastic restaurant with amazing food , you can get a good variety of noodles dishes as well as meats ones ( I suggest to try Pad Kee Mao, very tasty and with a delightful holy basil aroma) . The place is clean and well furnished, the staff is nice but the service,due to the amount of people always eating here , can be pretty slow

I went as famous home come up with! The taste is seumda like itneungeo!

Avant-Garde even for Thailand. This is way out there food! But if a discovery experience is what you want, this restaurant won t disappoint. If standard Thai is what you want, look elsewhere. They do have a couple of dishes you ll recognize, at triple the price.

After years and years of good cheap Thai food, I went in skeptical at the concept of pricey Thai food, and it was simply amazing...inventive twists to traditional Thai cuisine right from the cocktails to the dessert, except for one dish any sane person should avoid...the sauteed bok choy. Pricey for sure, but absolutely delicious.

Only had the pho here. Filling, but the broth is too cloyingly sweet, there's none of the subtle flavors that a good pho should have. Don't know if there's better pho in San Francisco, but I wouldn't come here for it.

First experience at a high end Michelin rated Korean restaurant. We loved everything all 5 of us tried. Helpful and patient staff as we tried to figure out what to order.

This is some of the best thai food in the city, my soup was extremely flavorful

Phenomenal experience. Kin Khao is an unpretentious place where the focus is clearly on the food. This is not your regular Royal Thai cuisine experience - instead, the restaurant seems to aim for more of a home Thai food type of meal, but using the very finest ingredients. We were blown away by the depth of the flavors. The Khao Yum Kai Dao (fried duck eggs over rice, chili jam sauce, peanuts, shallots, mint, cilantro) was exquisite and a great way to start the meal - a dish with excellent texture. The fish curry main was also brilliant. They have only one dessert on the menu, but I actually liked the simplicity. It's a black rice pudding, which is a great way to finish the meal. One advantage of the hotel location is that you can use valet parking if you come with your car and are on a date (get parking validated by the restaurant: $12 for 2h).

Very good Thai, the Beef Cheek Massaman was the best I've had. Watch out for the Green Papaya Salad, it is extra extra hot.

I can see why there is a question outside! Eat your way through as much of the menu as you can. Veggie dishes were better than the meat ones

Thai food like no other. Delicious, amazing flavors. All the pungency and intensity I crave from Thai cuisine, with high quality ingredients and attention to detail. A must try if you like Thai food, though it may spoil you for eating at typical Thai restaurants.

This is *not* westernized Thai food, this is Thai food elevated to another level. If you're looking for Pad Thai and mild curries, look elsewhere.

Fortunate to have no line on halloween (guess everyone's out partying) and got in to this super popular 1 Michelin star Thai restaurant inside Parc 55 Hilton. We got the famous wings, their own version of pad Thai, the squid that's spicy but super yummy and the beef brisket that is really superb. The only disappointing part is really the serving size, that could be improved if you intend to share. 2 people per dish is okay, adding another one would be short.

Outstanding Thai food hence the Michelin award. By all means

This place was DELICIOUS. Yes, it is a little on the expensive side , but the tenderness of the meat was the best part. I would recommend the curry. The softserve Thai tea was great. It was a little dark during the night, but not enough to make it 4 star.

Over hyped and expensive. Expect a long wait at the door. Food was very average.

I ate 30 minutes and waited ...
Squeeze it ... I feel like folk valley
I left it all ........
Two menus and rice and two drinks cost $ 100 ....
The quality and taste are less than that price.

I'd rather go somewhere else

Get the beignets! they're amazing. Overall the dishes are tasty and great for sharing. A very nice somewhat upscale version of your usual thai experience

We love Thai food and eat Thai food all the time, but at Kin Khao most of their food was painfully spicy that I wasn't able to enjoy my dinner at all. However, both of their desserts were delicious, will stop by their again for their black rice pudding and ice cream again!

Superb option for eclectic Thai food. While the place gets really busy, you can order cocktails as you wait. Tom yum (not the soup) cocktail is yummy if you like gin. The bean appetizer and the rabbit curry were really good. The chicken noodles were a bit salty but very tasty.

Great place to get some Asian fusion cuisines. It opens til 10 or 11 but reserve first! The service is great.

Great food at a good price. Went on a weekend during lunch and there was no wait.

I chose this place since was staying in Parc 55 and this is just round the corner. Also for the good ratings. But had a ridiculous experience. After an hour and a half waiting these guys show me the way to the bar since i came alone for dinner. I couldn't take this behavior and just asked them to cancel and left. No chivalry. Never seen a high rated restaurant behave like this. Working backwards from the count of people so that they can make more money.

While the food ain't inexpensive in here, it's well worth the price. The curry was absolutely amazing!

Super delicious! I would say a 4.5 for me, but rounding up because there was not really anything wrong with it.
> Its best to reserve or else you might have to wait a bit.
> Its very warm inside, and surprisingly loud.
> Drinks are fun to look at, as they are thai-inspired. If you don't drink alcohol, maybe check out the limeade. It's beautiful, its color changes as you stir the drink the first time!
> Food is served family style, which means they put the dishes in the middle and everyone shares. Portions are bigger than for 1 person, but not much bigger though, so I'd still recommend 1 dish per person, with adjustments depending on how much everyone eats in your party.
> Food is a bit different from the regular thai restaurants, their menu seems more modern or fusion, I'm not sure how to describe it... but if I was craving a creamy chicken curry, I probably wouldn't come here (they don't even serve a simple chicken curry, their green curry comes with rabbit and the masaman is beef cheek).
> That being said, everything we tried was delicious. I'll start with the curries, since that's my favorite dish overall: the rabbit curry ($36) was very good, but the rabbit is hard to eat due to the bones. It also comes with a couple of (rabbit) meatballs. The masamam nuea ($36) was gamey and rich in flavor. Neither was too spicy.
> Pretty Hot Wings ($14): really really good, out of the 6 dishes we got, this is 1 of the 2 I want to eat again next time. The 3 chicken wings are pretty big, and super rich in flavor.
> Caramelized Pork Belly ($22): the other winner of the night. It smells like heaven and tastes incredibly. Made me forget I was on a diet. I think the dish comes with 4 pieces of fat pork belly.
> Namprik Ong ($18): this is some sort of chilli paste that you put onto veggies or the pork cracklings. I'm not a fan of this one, and there were only 2 pork cracklings, so it was really hard to share. Other people really loved it though.
> Yaowaraj noodle ($20): noodles with toppings... in my opinion, inferior to any pad thai I've had, not a fan, wouldn't recommend it.
> Sitcky rice ($4) or plain rice come in a big bucket to share among 2-3 or more people.
We also had drinks and desserts~

Fantastic, mind-blowing food in a very down to earth setting.

We didn't know this was a michelin star restaurant when we walked in. But we were impressed by the great food and the wide wine selection. We had the German wine hexamer riesling quarzit to go with the 6 dishes we got on the recommendations from the waiter. My personal favorite dish was the rabbit green curry followed closely by Nam tok beans and the caramelized pork belly. Great food and good service.

Food was tasty but papaya salad lacked the spicy authenticity with chills - our version had no chilis at all. Service was efficient and fast
Reasonably priced

Delicious Thai Food. Hip Young Crowd. Tasty Yaowaraj Chicken Noodles. Fun Cocktails.

Inventive food, great service, and nice atmosphere. This is a must-try in SF. Try the duck egg, curries, or roast beans.

best thai place I ve ever had in us, though I hope the dish size can be larger

Interesting take on Thai food. Pad kee maw is a must order. Also have some great cocktails. Would recommend seating at the bar if possible as the wait can be substantial.

The food is way too expensive. The music was too hip. We waited a long time for a cocktail. One of the waitresses was rude while the other was very nice.

Kin Khao is definitely at the top of my list for best restaurants in San Francisco. They serve unique and flavorful Thai dishes and are open for lunch and dinner.

Mushroom Mock Terrine - DELICIOUS! It comes with rice cakes and is so flavorful and unique. Tons of umami.
Nam Tok Beans - Crispy beans with flavorful sauce. This was very fun to eat and definitely nothing I've ever eaten before.
Khao Soi - Creamy curry noodles with chicken. I loved the flavor. You can also order it vegetarian.

The dinner menu is much longer. I will have to come back to try more items. So delicious!

Excellent food and the non alcoholic drinks were super! A very popular place so make sure you book in advance.

They really do mean business when they say spicy. While it is tasty, it is on the expensive side

Honestly for the price, it's ok. A few real tasty items but not with the price

Despite the somewhat sterile building that it s located in Kim Khao is warm and inviting - and the food is phenomenal. Our waiter was incredibly knowledgeable and gave us recommendations that suited everyone s adventurous tastes. Highly recommend!

For authentic This Cuisine in SFO the right place; specially when it's a Mchillen Star. Dishes like wild boar meat n rabbit curries were exiting

So delicious I love to bring family from out of town and come to celebrate anything. That pork belly though! This place is family friendly and clean

Good food and cocktails, good service. Just great overall!

All the food and drinks that we had were great. We ordered the rabbit green curry, wild boar laab, squid, and noodles. We paired it with sticky rice and white jasmine rice. I like that they served the noodles first, then the laab and squid with sticky rice, then green curry with jasmine rice. The thought in the order and combo really ups them several notches. Of course the food is amazing.

For drinks I had the Bruto Americano and my friend had martini. Both very good.

I would come here again.

Terrible. Food is expensive, portions are small. Food is spicy with no taste. Everything was terrible.

It is different than the usual Thai restaurant but for the price, I found it to be overly salty (especially the massaman curry). I had some really spectacularly-prepped Thai noodles at a little shop in Bangkok but the dishes here didn't reach that level of execution. (More of a testament to that shop than a ding on Kin Khao but I was hoping to be floored by execution given the price and accolades.)

Portions were too small for the price. Food was good.

Wow! Truly great food. Watch out - "spicy" really is that. However, the variety of flavors and textures show how amazing the chef and staff really are.

It s nice to experience a Michelin Star Thai restaurant in SF. This place is located at the Parc 55 hotel and if you re out here for business, give them a try. The menu here is very northern Thai inspired and different from general American Thai restaurants. I really enjoyed the mushroom spread appetizer with rice crackers. The spicy bean appetizer was good but it felt too overpowered by spice to enjoy the dish. The fat chicken broth rice dish is a simple hainan inspired experience but I would recommend ordering their noodles instead. And of course, the Thai ice tea was delicious.

Not as amazing as I thought it would be. I love Thai food and this wasn't all that great. The food quality was phenomenal, but the taste was not like local Thai food at all. It was definitely a different experience and it had a hip atmosphere. I would recommend it for the good quality and vibe.

Unique and delicious cocktails and consistently fantastic food

Not bad. The menu was limited, and my Thai wife did not give it high marks for authenticity. The laab kua did not have much complexity in flavors. The green curry rabbit was pretty good though.

Very overrated restaurant! At least 6 gnats surrounding my table, one floating in the water, another in my food. Food is ok but the crispy chicken is soggy, service is below average. Won t be back.

Great Thai food with hearty broths. Comfortable and delicious. Definitely worth a visit.

Long wait times at this Michellin star restaurant. The menu is a unique and modern take on traditional Thai food. The restaurant itself is very small.

Great service and delicious food. Lots of vegan options. Loved noodles the most.

Hands down the best Thai food I had in the US.

The massaman beef was amazing. The spicy squid was very delicate but really spicy. Worked very well alongside the pork belly. Latter was cooked to amazing tenderness but was over the top fatty, so it's a personal choice. Was a bit much for me but works well with the squid.
Chicken noodles were just solid but that's because the rest was amazing.