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“Kin Shop”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	Asian	West Village	Moderate	Great

e long rectangular room and a chef’s table constructed from a handsome slab of granite set up near the open kitchen to the back.

While Harold is Italian-American, you’d never know it from the food flying out of his kitchen. His menu of contemporary reinterpretations of traditional Thai dishes is a product of his many ventures to Thailand over the years. Curries, of different levels of alarm, are all made in house, and, like the intensity of that Laab salad, almost nothing on this menu is a shrinking violet. His dishes, all meant for sharing (good luck with that), are brassy and sassy and demand that attention be paid. Good luck talking about anything other than the food is on your plate. We tried, but our sentences were cut off midway, with a running commentary on the complexity and divinity of the recipes.

A beautiful salad of butter lettuces and sprouts is one of the most unique salads I’ve met. It’s topped with sliced plums and sprinkled with toasted sunflower seeds in a sweet and spicy vinaigrette made from peppercorns and plum juice, my new favorite dressing. Warm sugar snap peas are dressed in a creamy lime and coconut dressing with lusciously sweet sea scallops, browned in a pan of hot butter ($16). Slurp that sauce up if necessary.

Stir-fried rice flakes ($21), which resemble flat noodles not bran flakes, are served in a flavor tussle with rock shrimp, cauliflower, fried garlic and sawtooth herb (similar to cilantro) to wonderful effect—the combination of the shrimp and cauliflower is a great textural marriage, one that benefits from the sharpness of the garlic and the strong cilantro song of the sawtooth herb.

The lobster special ($33) that night, stir fried with sunchokes, pea tendrils, and a duck egg in a mild yellow curry, is quite seasonal so I imagine it won’t make it to the regular menu, but I hope it does. The dish is well worth its steep price tag, with enough hunks of succulent lobster for a Labor Day family picnic, and that yellow curry fanning a deliciously sweet heat. On the side, add an order of crisp roti, think naan but fried in butter, and a bowl or two of jasmine rice.

The only off dish was the jungle curry with braised golden snapper and cuttlefish ($28) which was menued with four stars meaning “the spiciest dishes on our menu, and we mean it.” Not so. The Laab salad delivered the fire, but this dishes was oddly flat, it seemed to have b ... [more, click below]

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Posted: June 3, 2011

Other restaurants in West Village :
+ Jefferson-- Closed   + La Palapa Rockola   + Sumile   + Babbo   + Tasca   + AOC Bedford   + Home   + The Spotted Pig   + Barbuto   + Numero 26   + Mas   + August   + Alta   + Cru   + Blue Mill Tavern-- Closed   + Employees Only   + Lassi   + Metropol--Closed   + Turks and Frogs   + Bellavitae   + Yumcha-- CLOSED   + Gusto: SEE EARLIER REVIEW; THIS CHEF HAS LEFT GUSTO   + Perry Street   + Home   + Ditch Plains   + The Little Owl   + Cafe Condesa   + Cafe Cluny   + Gusto   + The Waverly Inn   + Morandi   + P*ONG   + Perilla   + Soto   + Market Table   + Centro Vinoteca   + Barfry   + Dell'Anima   + Bar Blanc   + Smith's   + Commerce   + Elettaria   + Bar Q   + Cabrito   + 10 Downing   + Minetta Tavern   + Braeburn   + Scuderia, by guest reviewer Kathleen Squires   + Bar Blanc Bistro by Guest Reviewer Kathleen Squires   + Joseph Leonard   + Bar Henry, by Guest Reviewer Kathleen Squires   + Kin Shop   + Monument Lane   + Wong   + Bin on Bleecker, by Dara Pollak   + Ristorante Rafele   + Cole's Greenwich Village by Guest Reviewer Claire Jaffe   

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