Thai Story

Ask a Castro resident what we have too much of in the neighborhood, and there are a certain number of shops that usually get mentioned:  porn, club-kid clothes, burritos, and Thai restaurants.  And while it's true that we have a lot of Thai, it's also interesting to note that there has been a fair amount of change in the last few years of Thai restaurants opening and closing.  Until recently we had a total of six Thai restaurants in the area, but if my current count is correct we are down to four.  (Yes, only four.  How will we survive?  Maybe on burritos.)

Here's my run-down on the Thai options in the Castro.

Hmm, but what kind of food do they serve?

My personal favorite is the one with the straightforward name:  Thailand Restaurant at 438 Castro Street, upstairs from the bar 440 Castro (formerly Daddies) and across from The Castro Theater.  Not that the food is anything spectacular, but I've consistently had good meals there, and I also like the seating in the windows with a nice view of the activity on Castro Street below.

The newest Thai restaurant (well, not actually -- I'll get to that later) is the Thai Chef on 18th Street next to Does Your Mother Know?.  (Interestingly, the web site calls it "Thai Chef 2" but I don't see any indication of where "Thai Chef 1" might be located.)  The sign is garish, but the inside is quite nice, and I've had some fine meals here. 

When they first opened last year, part of their gimmick was that the entire staff did drag, and the front window featured photos of the staff both in drag and out.  (Some of them were a little, um, rougher than others.)  Additionally, they would hold special drag shows on certain nights.

Pad thai and Thai drag

I never witnessed one of these drag nights, but based on a friend's report they were pretty much a hot mess in high heels.  My friend was waiting for a table and had been told that one would open up in 10 minutes.  Then almost immediately all of the staff disappeared to get ready for the drag show which brought everything in the restaurant to a grinding halt.  Needless to say, no patrons were leaving during the show, no bills were being distribued or collected, and so no one was going to be seated in any 10 minute interval in the near future.  My friend left.

The drag shows are no more, so I'm guessing that they realized that they were a literal drag (sorry) on the bottom line.

Not so much to look at on the outside, and full of Thai food on the inside (much like the author)

Also new, but a little bit older is Thaihouse Express on Castro at the corner of Castro and 19th Street.  I think that one has been around about 2 years now, and interestingly both it and Thai Chef replaced very old Chinese restaurants.

This restaurant is our stand-by for Sunday lunch if we can't decide on anything else.  The food is fine, and the presentation is a bit more stylish than the other restaurants.  The biggest problem with the place is that it painted white inside and out, and generally feels like a hospital waiting room.  I think that the designers were going for a sleek spa-like feel with the lack of ornamentation and stick-branch decorations, but this is more sanitarium than spa.  Check out the photo to the right here:  No, this is not a construction site.  This is the final facade for the place.

Funky building, eh?

The fourth Thai restaurant is Thai Corner Express (more express Thai!) at the narrow corner of Market, Sanchez, and 15th Street.  This is actually technically the newest Thai in the Castro because it recently changed hands and is sporting a "Grand Opening" banner now.  I believe that the previous Thai restaurant in this space had been there for quite a while, but we never, ever ate here.  Not that we were boycotting it, but I always found this building to feel dark and unwelcoming.  Also, you can walk right past it without really realizing that there is a restaurant there. 

I hope the new owners can figure out how to fix the bad juju that this building has, and make the place more obvious and welcoming.

Now, the two that got away...

A place to crave and be craved

I mentioned that until recently there were six Thai restaurants, and the two that closed were sister restaurants named Khun Phoa and Khun Phoa 2.  Khun Phoa was located on Market, next to Subway and under The Cafe.  Not long after it closed it was renovated and reopened as Crave, a stylish restaurant specializing in cocktails and featuring three high-tables placed directly in the front window, for maximal see-and-be-seen effect.  I haven't been inside yet, but it seems popular already.

This little light of Crave's

This place caught our attention during the renovations because one of the first things they installed was the light fixture pictured to the left.  It is attached in the doorway, and is visually striking, delicate and sleek ... and is completely exposed to the street, 24 hours a day.  We saw that and cringed, wondering how long it was going to be before some homeless person was strutting down Castro wearing that fixture like a tiara.

Sure enough, three of the lights were snapped off pretty quickly, but miraculously since then nothing else has happened and the fixture is still there today.  Those three lights have never been replaced, which is sad, but I'm glad that spindly little light is surviving.  It's really a metaphor for any business in the Castro, in a way.  Effete, over-designed, and surviving against all odds. 

Or maybe not.  We'll see if Crave survives the year, but it does seem to have a lot of traffic, which is good.

Khun Phoa no more

Khun Phoa 2 was located on 18th Street, and it has not seen anything replace it yet.  That building was in much worse shape -- dank, dark, oddly chopped up with doors and walls -- so maybe that was to be expected.  The building has been boarded up for literally months now, and although the boards themselves have changed periodically, there doesn' t seem to be much evidence of anything going on in there.

However there is an application for a liquor license posted, and the business name given is Brandy Ho's Hunan Food.  Now this name sounds so much like a drag queen fundraiser at NTouch that it's hard to take it seriously, but I'm also fearful that they are going to steal the drag show idea from Thai Chef and try to debut the Castro's first Hunan drag show.  At the very least, the Chinese resturants are going to reclaim one from the Thai after losing the two locations above. 

Come back to the Hunan buffet, Brandy Ho, Brandy Ho