Pok Pok Phat Thai
Pok Pok Phat Thai
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
4 reviews
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Hype. Energy. Buzz. Excitement.
In restaurants, it usually comes with the opening. There are breathless profiles and reviews, competition among friends about the first to go, the hot takes and defenses. Then the TripAdvisor posts appear and so do the tourists from Amsterdam, Tokyo and East London. The second location and the new menu items. The chefs coming and going.
It's a steady drumbeat that burrows deep inside your ear canal. But as with all constant noises, after a while your brain deletes, it just fades into the background. There's a new noise, or in the case of New York 200 new noises, to capture your attention.
So it is with the Pok Pok empire, which arrived in New York four years ago to an avalanche of hype. First there was the "pop up" wing shop in the Lower East Side, but that was just a preview of the mini-empire that sprouted up on the Columbia Waterfront. At its height there were three different establishments in as many blocks, all turning out variations of a fiercely-spiced, aggressively funky approach to Thai food.
I know all this because I fell hard for the story. Part of it was penance for culinary sins committed in my youth, traveling extensively in Thailand but too often sticking to the "banana pancake" fare of bland food for tourists. It's really been in New York where I've discovered laab and kao soi, sour fish sauces and dry rubs.
Andy Ritcher represented the ne plus ultra of this, a man who spent years learning about these traditions, who filled his menus with paragraph long descriptions of the dishes and went back east with video cameras to meet local chefs. I've been to all of his restaurants in New York and even to a couple in Portland, absorbing his ethos and food.
But when I took a group of seven to Pok Pok Phat Thai on Wednesday, it'd been a long time since I'd even thought about the man. We are playing bocce in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and I was looking for a place to eat. I was hoping that we could sample Nashville Hot Chicken, the latest food trend to invade the city. It's not open yet, despite that steady drum of coverage and anticipation already beginning. So we went to Pok Pok.
It was empty. There was only one other person there at 8 p.m., flipping through a book on Thai history as she sipped a cocktail. The crowds had moved on.
What's left is perhaps the most approachable place in the Pok Pok empire. There's all of the "hits" and little of the challenging fare that scares people when they first see one of Andy's menus.
The menu is mostly chicken wings and pad thai. The pad thai is simply the best in the city. All of the sweetness and filler ingredients of the neighborhood places are gone, with the emphasis on a balance of flavors,the fish sauce and spice, the noodles and the protein. The wings are stellar as ever; it's no surprise that I've seen copies of this flavor profile showing up elsewhere in the City.
It's a shame that the people working here seem to have absorbed the knowledge that they are no longer working at the cutting edge of dining. The service was shockingly pokey for a place with no customers. Our waiter disappeared for long periods of time, took forever to arrive back some drinks and generally seemed disengaged.
Why should they feel like this? Pok Pok is still a worthy place to eat. Many of the people I came with had never had their food and were impressed. There are still so many minds to blow – let's not put all of our possessions on the hype train as it heads to the next station.
I can see why they only have 2-1/2 stars & guess what? Now they have ONE. We came because we'd been to the other Pokpok a few doors away & liked it, but no way. TO start off, even though the place is small, they only have ONE a person waiting on tables, making the drinks & answering the phone. Definitely not adequate. Secondly, the food was served on PAPER plates with PLASTIC utensils or chopsticks (I opted for the latter). The menu was VERY limited. I chose a vegetarian pad Thai, which I asked for a substitute of broccoli instead of another ingredient. Not only did it NOT arrive WITH broccoli, but after I asked the waiter where the broccoli was & he took it back, it didn't have it the SECOND time either. Simply put, I'd never come back.
Pok pok used to be a favorite of mine but the service at this restaurant is really bad. The waiter didn't check on us and never refilled our water.
Pok Pok Phat Thai was on my to-do list for a long time, before they moved over from LES. But now they're a lot closer to me, so that's a plus. Pok Pok sacrificed Whiskey Soda Lounge for Phat Thai, but they'll probably be able to get more spillover from their flagship on busy nights. It's not a big place though, and likely understaffed. I'm guessing that's the reason for the average score of 2.5 stars.
We wanted to call in an order for pickup (we were a few blocks away), and I was put on hold for 7 minutes. I eventually hung up and just walked over. The wait for the food was 15 minutes (they could've been halfway done preparing my food while they had me on hold…), so I stopped by Hop Shop a few doors down for a drink before going back.
We ordered the spicy Ike's wings, because let's face it – you have to get them.
Also got the Phat Thai Ruam (with prawns and pork), and the Kuaytiaw Khua Kai (rice noodles with chicken and pork fat). We split those three things between three people. Of course, everyone loved the wings (and at 6 to an order, it was the perfect amount). The Kuaytiaw noodles were also a favorite of our group, especially the noodles that were just crispy around the edges.
We actually ate our food in the back room of 40 Knots a block away, which is a solid plan if you don't care about ambience and just want to chill out to loud music and cheap beers.