November 2011
The version of this review that I wrote for Arts London News, my uni newspaper, can be found here: http://artslondonnews.co.uk/20111103-thai-restaurant-review
The good thing about having to wait half an hour for a seat in a restaurant is that it probably means the food will be something special. After half an hour of hungry anticipation, we were seated at KaoSarn, a Thai restaurant in the popular Brixton Village area of friendly little shops and restaurants all cosied up under the railway bridge in Brixton.
KaoSarn is BYOB, so we sat smugly sipping cheap red wine, pretending it was expensive restaurant wine, as we made our order. For starters we had pork skewers and chicken wings, both smothered in spicy marinades and served with a chilli dip (which I was relieved to see was homemade, as I can’t stand those neon glutinous bottled sweet chilli sauces).
Both the starters were meaty perfection! Crispy on the outside, plump and juicy on the inside, completely worth the sticky fingers and sauce down my chin.
We ordered a Tom Yum soup and a beef Massoman curry for our mains. I imagine that if you are the sort that always orders a Chicken Korma, the Massoman curry would be your Thai equivalent. There was nothing wrong with it per se, and I can never really complain about a dish that includes peanuts (those little dreams), but it lacked the depth of flavour and spiciness that I seek in Thai food.
The Tom Yum soup however, was exactly what I was after! It is a dish that I regularly order, and KaoSarn’s was one of the best I have ever experienced. The broth had a delicious nutty undertone to all the heat, and I gobbled up all the fish balls, pork mince, crispy prawns, bean sprouts and noodles in a matter of minutes. And those were some great minutes.
By the time our mains had disappeared, we were a little tipsy and getting caught up in the party atmosphere that takes over Brixton Village at night. We got completely carried away and extravagantly ordered DESSERT. This was banana fritters with maple syrup and vanilla ice cream, a combination I had never even considered before, but now I can’t get it out of my head! One of the best desserts I’ve had in a long time, there was nothing not to love about this sweet, creamy and crispy concoction.
We made a swift exit after dessert – there were plenty of people still waiting for a table, and we’d be pretty terrible people if we casually lounged around finishing our wine for twenty minutes.
Book a table, or come early expecting to wait. And get as many starters as you can afford, all the ones we saw on the tables around us looked great too.
