Spectacular Southern-Thai Food, at Chalong | The New Yorker

"I was initially skeptical about oysters in elaborate preparations, but after finally trying the Lumpu Salad at Chalong, a new southern-Thai restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen, I was converted: a cluster of milky-looking oysters (usually from the East Coast) is dressed in chili paste, spooned into a pool of seafood sauce (green chili, cilantro, garlic, lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar), piled high with fried shallot, raw red onion, fresh mint, cilantro, and Thai bird chili, and finished with tender pea shoots and coins of radish—sour, sweet, briny, and refreshing, the cool, creamy oysters playing foil to the sharp heat and crisp herbs. The salad is one of about a half-dozen appetizers on offer at the restaurant, which opened in January by chef Nate Limwong—who grew up in Surat Thani—and colleagues from Fish Cheeks and Soothr; each dish reads like a standout on the menu, in the neighborhood, and in the city at large. I’ve never had anything quite like the Baerng Golae, where kanom baerng (coconut crisps made from flour, egg, and coconut milk and imprinted with a floral pattern) are folded warm into taco-like shells for soft, juicy grilled shrimp marinated in and topped with golae, a southern-Thai paste of fifteen spices including cumin, ginger, cassia, and star anise. “Puff sticks,” laminated vegan pastry wrapped around grated coconut and seasoned with makrut lime, black pepper, garlic, and cilantro, are an exhilarating sweet-and-savory ride, while Jor Pu—fried tofu skin stuffed with crabmeat, shrimp, and pork—arrives gold and glistening to be dipped in plum sauce. Flakes of branzino cured overnight in fish sauce and sugar and then deep-fried hide in a pomelo or star-fruit salad, and that branzino also appears in Khao Yum, to be tossed with jasmine rice, a super-funky crab-roe relish, sprouted mung beans, chili, and thinly shaved lemongrass. A rich coconut-based crab curry is made exceptional by the inclusion of both jumbo lump meat and half a deep-fried soft-shell crab, and the Hor-Mok—flaked sea bass and fiery curry paste wrapped in banana leaf—turns custardy as it steams. Limwong’s skill with meat is evident in pork spareribs in curry that are braised and fried to release flavors in succession—a clanging note of makrut lime followed by a slowly building heat. My favorite, the Lon Tao Jiew (retired for the season and due back in the fall), was a vegan cornucopia of raw cucumber, radish, and enormous, peppery betel leaves arranged around warm silken tofu sweetened with coconut milk and deepened by a fermented yellow soybean relish; the tofu held its shape on a spoon but melted on the tongue. Entrées range $18–$32, and Limwong’s focus on seafood is echoed in the tasteful, beachy décor." - Hannah Goldfield