Wayla

The Summer Hit List: New Places To Eat & Drink Outside - New York - The Infatuation

"One of the best new restaurants in the city also has a backyard that’s better-furnished than your living room. It’s called Wayla, and it’s a Thai restaurant on the Lower East Side where you can eat some fried branzino, noodle-wrapped meatballs, and a bunch of other stuff that’ll make you want to build a small home inside this place. With its brick walls and dim lighting, the dining room is a perfectly pleasant place to eat this food, but if it’s even moderately nice outside, you should sit in the backyard. It’s full of potted plants, string lights, and expensive-looking furniture, and it feels like a photoshopped version of your daily existence." - bryan kim, hillary reinsberg