Exberliner issue 185, September 2019

BERLIN BITES
Jane Silver
Reviews
Spice girls
Jane Silver tries a disappointing dinner and
revelatory lunch from Berlin’s two top Thai chefs.
Sing, O muses, of bean curd and coconut,
of lemongrass and locally butchered
poultry. Of two culinarily gifted
Thai Berlinerinnen, one on each side of the
“expat-migrant” divide, and the socioeconomic
factors that led one to be anointed
with a Michelin star and the other to languish
in obscurity as “the soup lady”.
Let’s start with that Michelin star, awarded
in February to Kin Dee (photo right) and its
33-year-old chef Dalad Kambhu. Born into
a wealthy Bangkok family and educated in
New York (where she famously modelled
while honing her self-taught cooking skills),
Kambhu floated into town in 2016 on a cloud
of hype. With the help of scene connections
including contemporary artist Rirkrit
Tiravanija and the boys behind Grill Royal
and Pauly Saal, she launched a pop-up that
set Berlin tongues and food media ablaze. A
restaurant – in the Potse space vacated by
beloved Thai veteran Edd’s – followed suit;
next thing you knew, the New York Times and
Vogue were waxing rhapsodic about Kambhu’s
homemade spice pastes and deft use of
German ingredients. A scant two years later,
Michelin came calling. By the time we sat
down for our €55-a-head, eight-dish “sharing
experience”, we were completely awash in
the Kambhu Kool-Aid. Had our expectations
been lower and that star plaque not affixed
to the door, we probably would have been
charmed by the meal. As it was, we were
Born into a wealthy
Bangkok family and
educated in New York,
Kambhu floated into town
on a cloud of hype.
doomed for disappointment.
Kin Dee seems to still be growing into its
starred status, with slapdash-feeling beige
laminate tables and well-meaning waitstaff
who’ll jump to refill your water glass but
struggle with the wine menu and have to
consult with the kitchen on questions like
“where does the chicken come from?” (Our
eventual answer: Martkhalle IX butcher
Kumpel & Keule, which sources its meat
from local farmers.)
That chicken came in a mellow peanut
satay sauce with sliced yellow beets. At a
neighbourhood Thai joint, it would’ve been
a delight; here, at the bottom of a fancy
ceramic dish, it was just okay. The same went
for our other starters: a raw duo of chilliand
lemongrass-topped scallop and trout
“ceviche”, and a couple slivers of tempurafried
squash blossom. Tasty enough, but we’d
been primed for mind-blowing. The closest
we got to that was Kambhu’s signature octopus,
confited till crispy-tender and served
atop a deeply spicy basil, chilli and tamarind
paste whose Thai name, kraprao, serves as an
onomatopoeia for what it does to your tastebuds.
The red rice alongside was overcooked,
but helped dull the burn.
For mains, a bafflingly flavourless filet
of steamed scabbardfish succeeded only in
making us jealous of our neighbour’s chilli
and wild garlic clams. Braised beef shoulder
in a green curry sauce, with zucchini and silky
roasted eggplant, fared better, but we were
more interested in the grilled romaine on
the side, topped with caramelised coriander
seeds for a novel sweet-savoury-crunchy
touch. Then a “palate-neutralising” bowl
of warm cucumber broth was sold to us as
an emotional stage of the meal for Kambhu
herself, its humbleness supposedly an empathetic
nod to the Thai people’s simple diet
(seriously?!). It was followed by
a dessert of brioche bits and fruit
swimming at the bottom of a coconut
sorbet, served in upcycled
palm sugar packaging cups.
Again, Michelin-worthy? Nope.
We might have been less frustrated
with Kin Dee had we not
eaten at Thai Art (photo left)
a couple weeks earlier. This is
the year-old, bare-bones Imbiss
operated by the aforementioned
“soup lady” – whose name, by
the way, is Siliya Rothert. After
moving to Berlin from the central
region of Sukhothai, Rothert spent a decade
in the Thai Park trenches, drawing the street
food market’s longest queues as she assembled
bowl after bowl of pork tom yum from a
sprawling mise en place of plastic tubs.
That soup is the star at Thai Art, too,
and it’s still got a clear, spicy-tangy broth,
perfectly cooked rice noodles and an ingredient
list longer than the songwriter credits
for Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode” (among the
most obvious: bean sprouts, chilli, lime, scallions,
peanuts, fried wonton skin and pork
in roasted, minced, meatball and crackling
form). But we were most dazzled by the beef
boat noodles. Rothert’s opaque broth goes
easy on the blood and hard on the fermented
bean curd for an incredibly funky depth
of flavour, the kind we’d hoped to find but
mostly missed at Kin Dee.
Vegetarians will have to pass on soup, but
even the tofu pad thai is done better here -
nicely wok-caramelised without a hint of gumminess.
Curries and the gravy stir-fry lad na
can also be made meatless, though carnivores
are definitely getting the best deal. We’ll be
back on a Wednesday for the northern Thai
dish khanom jin nam ngiaw, a braised pork and
tomato stew ladled over rice vermicelli.
One’s heart aches to think about what
Rothert – who started off at her mother’s
restaurant back home and has been cooking
since Kambhu was practically in diapers
– could do with Kin Dee’s free-range
meat, fresh seafood and top-notch produce.
Instead, she’s forced to keep prices down to
meet diners’ “soup lady” expectations. She
told us some have baulked at Thai Art’s baseline
of €7.50 per dish, which is just ridiculous.
But the silver lining is that for now, for
the price of a single dinner at Kin Dee, you
can order seven bowls of Rothert’s noodles.
We know which one we’d rather get. T
KIN DEE Lützowstr. 81, Tiergarten, Tue-
Sat 18-22 | THAI ART Berliner Str. 42A,
Wilmersdorf, Mon-Fri 11-20, Sat-Sun 12-20
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EXBERLINER 185