Khao Bird, Soho

Before I was able to assess the authenticity or otherwise of the food at Khao Bird, I could at least appreciate the ambient temperatures in the dining hall were at genuine Thai levels. It's not really their fault that we visited during one of the hottest day's of London's seemingly endless heatwave, but it really is getting to the stage that if your place doesn't have actual AC (or if it's not turned up (down?) enough) then I'm really going to have to think twice on whether I want to spend time there, no matter how good the food is.

So it's thanks to the food at Khao Bird being rather good indeed that I was able to - temporarily - put up with the raging temperatures and for a few moments on a Sunday afternoon enjoy an interesting variety of Northern Thai BBQ (their own description of their own food). But not before tucking into one of these bad boys, a spicy margarita made with mezcal and a pleasingly significant dose of chilli which blew open the taste buds in preparation for the food to follow.

At this point I should say that yes, I know the photos are awful - it was dark in there as well as hot, and I was only halfheartedly paying attention to my blogging responsibilities as I was meeting a friend from Liverpool for dinner and didn't want to embarrass him too much with my Big Noisy Camera. But these (I promise) are crispy pigs ears, just the right balance of crunchy and chewy, served with an addictive nam pla and a fantastic nibble with the margarita.

I've been served such a huge variety of things over the years sharing the name laab that I honestly am not sure what is the core laabness that makes a laab a laab other than, more often than not, a borderline hallucinatory hit of chilli. This is steak tartare and Campari (full marks for imagination at least) and was both so good and so hot that I was forced to take tiny mouthfuls of it every 10 minutes or so, the breaks just enough for the burning to dip from acute pain to a dull throb, then back again. Crispy tofu skin on top provided a nice crunch to offset the raw beef texture and various other bits of fresh veg and spices rounded the whole thing off nicely. Not your traditional laab, then - if such a thing even exists - but well worth an order if you're a chilli fiend.

Another Thai staple, Som Tam, used Isle of White tomatoes and local "shrub veg" (your guess is as good as mine but I like to think someone's got their foraging on) with the usual tamarind-chilli mixture and was finished with "our family honey", which was a very nice touch. The trick, I imagine, in running a successful Thai restaurant outside of Thailand is knowing when to substitute local ingredients and when to stick to imported Thai originals. I love the idea of creating a Thai salad with English garden vegetables and authentic imported fish sauce, especially when the result is as good as this.

Also ordered and not pictured (I did take a photo, but you really don't want to see it believe me) was a giant steaming bowl of grilled chicken khao soi, a northern Thai curry that involved a rich coconut broth, egg noodles two ways, boiled and crisped, pickled mustard greens and chilli. Even without the chicken this would have been a fantastically enjoyable thing to slurp down, but the chicken managed to hold the crisp and char of the coals despite being dunked in the sauce, and thanks to an aggressive marinade the flesh was salty and firm right to he bone - not a hint of dryness. Impressive stuff, and well worth £23 considering the amount of work that had clearly gone into it.

With a couple of pots of jasmine rice and - I have a vague memory of this - a little dish of miso broccoli, the bill came to just over £50pp which is pretty much exactly what you should be spending on interesting, intelligently constructed food of this kind in London. If I'm going to be absolutely brutal I'd say Kiln is still my favourite Soho Thai spot but these days that's altogether a more serious and spendy affair. Khao Bird is fun, accessible and - by the standards of 2026 - good value, and easily makes my recommendation list as an unpretentious little spot that takes itself just seriously enough where it matters. And if they fixed their AC, it would be even better.

8/10