First Michelin Meal: Kin Khao, SF

The Michelin Star is an accolade awarded by the French company Michelin and is about a century old. A restaurant can be awarded 1-3 stars (*: A very good restaurant in its category or Une très bonne table dans sa catégorie, **: Excellent cooking, worth a detour or Table excellente, mérite un détour, ***: Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey or Une des meilleures tables, vaut le voyage). It is hard and rare for a restaurant to be awarded Michelin Stars but there are about 30 such restaurants in San Francisco city itself. How could I pass up the opportunity to visit one? Kin Khao. The name of this Thai restaurant Kin Khao means "eat rice" in Thai. I cannot think of a better name for an Asian restaurant.

The feel of this excellent dining establishment was relaxed and casual. Many people associate Michelin rated restaurants as being poncy fine-dining eateries. The mood in Kin Khao was incredibly homey. Its clientele includes hip millennials, established executives, and even white-haired retirees. Because let's be real - who doesn't like Asian food.

What makes a great restaurant though? Ingredients. Both the type of ingredients and the way the ingredients are prepared. It has got to be nostalgic, yet novel. It should be familiar, yet fresh. Kin Khao does it well by serving classic Thai dishes but with unique ingredients beautifully cooked and prepared.

Again we wanted to try everything on the menu but settled for a green curry. Can there be anything more cliché or boring than a green curry you might ask? Well not this one. One of Kin Khao's specialty is their Khun Yai's Rabbit Green Curry. That is right. Rabbit.

Adventurous but not outrageous. Although you might say it is outrageous to eat a cute fluffy rabbit. In that bowl, we had a leg of rabbit, a saddle of rabbit, rabbit meatballs, complimented by some apple eggplant and garnished with sweet Thai basil. Not bad for a bowl of curry, huh. Do not underestimate the price of that one bowl of curry, though. We also had a pot of brown jasmine rice to go with, which was some of the best rice I have ever had. And I am Asian. ​

​ How did it taste? Divine. To me at least. Lets start with the curry. It was lovely. Tasted clean. Smooth. Flavourful but not overly rich. But a word of caution, the curry is spicy and is not for the uninitiated. And that is what makes it authentic! It is not really a true Thai green curry if it is more sweet than spicy, or if it tastes predominantly of coconut milk and nothing else. So yes, it is spicy. It is, after all, good for you.

But let's not ignore the other ingredients. The spiciness of the curry was balanced by several other flavours. Apple eggplant, a staple in Thai cooking, creamy and packed with anti-oxidants. Then the rabbit. Where do we begin. Now if I hadn't told you that it was rabbit, and if you were wolfing down the bowl of curry, you would probably think it was chicken. Its looks and texture is very similar to chicken. However, if you take the time to savour it, you would detect a richer flavour to the meat and distinct sweetness that lingers. NOT chicken. The rabbit was cooked well. Succulent. Juicy. Everything that you could ask for. Having rabbit 3 different ways was also a party for the palate. The leg, a darker, richer meat that fell of the bone, was my favourite. The saddle was a lighter meat with a stringier texture. The meatball was moist with the juice of the rabbit and marvellous.

And so you get the spice from the curry, the creaminess of the eggplant, and the sweetness of the rabbit. And that sweetness lingers. Amazing. And a good thing too. After all, if you paid $30 for a bowl of curry, it had better be blow-your-mind-incredible. But yet again, rabbits do not come cheap anyway. You do not breed and prepare rabbit for consumption like you do chicken or any other commonly eaten livestock. Rabbits are special. And so is Kin Khao.

#Asian #Thai #SF