Tom Parker Bowles: Eating out
Tom adores the heat and spice of the offerings at Kolae, a top Thai spot in Borough Market, London
Dish list (clockwise from left): sea-bass curry; stir-fried greens; soy-braised pork belly; sour mango salad with roasted coconut; kale fritters
Balance. That’s what real Thai cooking is all about. Not just of the hot, sweet, sour and salty, but dishes on the table too. A fierce jungle curry served alongside delicate soup, an incendiary nahm prik (or relish) accompanied by a plate of raw vegetables.
And balance is something they understand at Kolae, the second restaurant from Mark Dobbie and Andy Oliver, the pair behind Som Saa. Here, in a small, softly lit space just off Borough Market, they concentrate on the food of the South – hot, fishy and stained yellow with turmeric.
And just like Som Saa, the food is good here, sometimes outstanding, with little interest in pandering to the niceties of the timid western palate. Dobbie and Oliver (like David Thompson or Luke Farrell) are not Thai. Yet they have an inherent respect for this great cuisine, a deep, enduring love that can be tasted in every dish.
Their restaurant is named after a southern cooking style involving marinating meat, fish or vegetables in a curry-like coconut paste and cooking over coals: tonight, plump skewered mussels, and chicken thigh. Coconut-sweet, but never cloying, each bite is filled with gentle, smoke-scented allure.
Things get a whole lot more punchy with roasted shrimp paste relish. It’s dry, salty and pungent (thanks to the gapi, or fermented prawn paste), with lots of toasted coconut.
Incandescently hot too, thanks to a liberal dose of whole tiny bird’s eye chillies, bright as traffic lights and horribly addictive. I actually have to pause for a moment, lost in a sweaty capsaicin trance, teetering between burning pain and pure, unfiltered pleasure. Thank god, then, for the fistfuls of cool, crisp vegetables (along with herbs, turmeric and green mango) that act as both scoop and salve.
Green mango salad (a form of som tum) is also outstanding – sour, sweet, hot and salty, each mouthful exploding in glorious technicolour across the tongue. In contrast, a mellow, creamy and elegant minced prawn curry that soothes and cossets. And a robust, peppery venison one too, with tiny bitter pea aubergines and a deep, sonorous depth. Everything here, from pert coconut pickles to the service and wine list, is a joy.
And so Kolae joins Plaza Khao Gaeng (as well as parts of Thai 101 and Singburi) as a southern Thai restaurant to make the tastebuds tumescent and the gut giddy with sun-drenched joy.
About £30 per head. Kolae, 6 Park Street, London SE1; kolae.com
