Kin Shop

I’m baaaaaaaaaacccckkk. After a year (almost to the day) hiatus, I am going to start updating my blog again! Try to muffle your excitement; you can’t can you?

Our journey begins on a blustery winter night… my husband (yup!) and I have been hearing a lot about Kin Shop. We love Perilla, which is probably our most often visited restaurant in NYC. So, we had to try out the new restaurant by Harold Dieterle. Don’t be fooled. These two restaurants have only one thing, other than the owner/chef in common, they are both excellent.

Perilla is the perfect place to go on a random Friday night when you don’t know where you want to go but you know you want something good. I have never made a reservation there and try to go early and sit at the bar. Kin Shop, its Thai relative, has a very different atmosphere. Where Perilla is homey and welcoming, Kin Shop is hip and alluring.

Ok, let’s get onto the good stuff. Oddly, I just had my leftovers for lunch today and I can tell you that hot or cold they are still amazing. (I can’t help it if I like my Asian leftovers cold). My husband and I have an issue when going to a new restaurant. We want everything on the menu and tend to eat like a bunch of savage beasts. I can eat more around him then I would any other person….and, much to my stomach’s dismay I do! When we first walked into the small restaurant, which lies inconspicuously between a bodega and a pizza shop, I was surprised my its lack of bar and coat check. Here we were, 20 degrees outside, perfectly on time for our reservation with nowhere to go… There is a bar, but it’s in the back of the restaurant and not welcoming to a pre-dinner drink. Luckily, we only had to stand around for about 5 minutes before someone paid their check at the bar and we were sat there to wait. Another 5 minutes pass and we are ushered to our seats. The music was great, keeping with the restaurants upbeat aura.

We quickly spotted one of our favorite restaurant wines, the Nikolaihof Gruner Veltliner. If you haven’t tried it, I suggest you do. It was especially fitting for a meal of spicy Thai! Not-so-to-the-side-note, on the dessert menu there was a Merry Edwards 2008 dessert wine. Merry Edwards Sauvignon Blanc is by far my favorite wine. I was rather surprised to see it, and although we didn’t try it (because dessert wine is bordering on gross), I’m sure it’s fantastic if you like that sort of thing… But I digress…

We began with the warm sliced snap peas with Diver Sea scallops, which we were told by the bartender was one of the favorites of the house. Granted, I tend to always order a scallop anything. The scallops were perfectly seared, with just the right amount of crisp outside to compliment the scallop’s tenderness. The snap peas added the right amount of crunch and greens to give you the chance to pretend you chose a healthy starter. We also chose the Fried pork and crispy oyster salad. The chili lime vinaigrette is the same that is used on the excellent calamari at Perilla. Its sweet and spicy and very much complimented the fishy taste of the oyster and the hearty fried pork. I am not one to compliment pork belly. But, this was a very well done piece of meat. I could barely tell that I was eating lard.

For our main courses, a bottle of wine later, we got the steamed snapper with green curry, baby bok choy and kabocha squash and the stir fried rice flakes with rock shrimp. If you talked to me a year ago, you would have a hard time imagining me saying this, but I really like Thai food. Its flavorful, doesn’t have to be too filling and you can even go healthy. Steamed snapper? If I knew how to use my bamboo steamer, I could attempt this at home! For my husband, making good green curry is an art form. On the back of the menu, it describes how many ingredients go into curry paste. It was scary. Don’t even bother. But you should bother ordering the green curry at Kin Shop. It was the second best green curry we have ever had (debatable between us, but I win because I’m the writer and he’s the editor). Bringing you full circle to my lunch today, the stir friend rice noodles were/are amazing. I loved the cauliflower addition as well. None of the spices were too hot, which says a lot coming from me, and the shrimp was not overly chewy or too tender.

All said and done, it was a nice way to get myself back into my self important, over indulgent way of spending my time… eating hordes of food and telling my adoring fan (thanks mom!) all about it.