Chada, tucked into the West Village on Sixth Avenue, has been one of my favorite Thai restaurants in New York since it opened a little over a year ago and maintains it’s standing in my book.
My favorite restaurants would logically be the ones I visit most, right? I wish. If I had Masa money every night I went out, I imagine my life would look a bit different, but I digress.
The truth is, I have always found it surprisingly difficult to define what makes a restaurant a favorite. Great food is obviously a prerequisite, or at least a few truly great dishes, but there has to be something more. My favorites tend to straddle a particular line. They are interesting enough that I want to tell people about them, but approachable enough that I actually want to return for random occasions. They sit in parts of town I frequent, are usually possible to get into without planning three weeks in advance, and can just as easily serve as the backdrop for a date as for a gathering of friends.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I seem to appreciate a similar degree of versatility in the people I bring along. My guest for the evening is the kind of woman who can show up to dinner in a cocktail dress, spend several minutes breaking down the minute complexities of a dish and happily indulge me as I ramble about whatever strange definition of “dinner” a chef has decided to explore with their current menu. She also arrived at Chada wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words “Silly Goose University,” accompanied, naturally, by matching goose socks. This is, in its own strange way, the dichotomy I look for in a potential favorite restaurant.
Chada, tucked into the West Village on Sixth Avenue, has been one of my favorite Thai restaurants in New York since shortly after it opened. I reviewed it once before, though that matters less than how dramatically the restaurant around me had changed. During my first visit, Chada was still new enough that there was plenty of room to stretch out. This time, seemingly every seat was occupied with a sea of smiling patrons.
That transformation makes sense. Founder Praonnut “Pim” Udompanit and her team have built something that is remarkably easy to like. Chada draws from Bangkok street food and festive Thai dining, but presents those influences in a colorful, polished room inspired by Thai royal architecture and craftsmanship. Chef Sira “Don” Dechasawas approaches the food with a similar mentality, playing with familiar Thai flavors without losing sight of where they came from, while finding opportunities to elevate them without obscuring their roots.
That last part is especially relevant with Chada’s newest menu additions. The team told me that the goal was not to chase whatever happens to be fashionable in New York right now. Instead, they wanted to introduce dishes tied more closely to the food and flavors they grew up around. It is an admirable instinct, particularly for a restaurant that has clearly found an audience.
Before getting to the food, though, we need to talk about the drinks. Chada has one of those rare cocktail programs where ordering a glass of wine almost feels like missing the point. Mixologist Teddy Chantarasombat and Bar Manager Pattakan “Limon” Rumsanthia have built the signature menu around characters from the Thai epic Ramakien, several of whom also appear throughout the restaurant’s artwork. More importantly, the drinks are really, really good.
The Hanuman pairs gin with pandan, and the pandan comes through immediately. There is a distinct sweetness to the drink, but also an aromatic quality that keeps it from becoming one-note. My guest opted for the Last Kiss of Summer, a vodka-based cocktail combining lychee, hibiscus, St-Germain and lemon. Floral and fruit-forward, the lychee came through most prominently without overwhelming the drink. It is an important distinction. These are fun drinks, but they are also properly constructed cocktails.
The food followed much the same pattern. We began with the folded pandan dumplings, which brought together sweetness, coconut and a subtle nuttiness in a small, surprisingly layered bite. Fried calamari was even further removed from expectation. There is very little about Chada’s version that resembles the standard basket of fried seafood ubiquitous across New York menus. Here, the calamari came coated in a tangy, almost eel-sauce-like glaze that made it richer, sweeter and considerably more interesting. Pim also pointed out that calamari is not something you would typically find on a Thai menu, which somehow makes Chada’s version feel even more like a forbidden treat worth trying. Spring rolls rounded out the opening stretch before we moved into the dishes that better explain why I keep coming back here.
Image by the Knockturnal
Branzino was perhaps the simplest of them. There is no need to overcomplicate a good piece of fish, and Chada largely does not. The real character comes from a sharp lime sauce that cuts through the fish and gives an otherwise straightforward dish considerably more energy.
Image by the Knockturnal
The short rib Panang curry goes in the opposite direction. It is unapologetically beefy and rich, but Chada complicates that richness with a Panang curry built around coconut and sweetness. The result is heavy without feeling monotonous, with enough contrast to prevent the beef from completely taking over the plate.
Image by the Knockturnal
Then there is the beef tallow fried rice, a dish that makes very little effort to behave reasonably. Fried rice would have been sufficient. Beef tallow fried rice would already have gotten my attention. Chada proceeds to place a full ribeye on top and finish the whole thing with an egg yolk. Subtle, it is not. Excellent, it is. There is something wonderfully excessive about the dish, but it works because the excess has a point. The tallow brings a deeper beef flavor into the rice itself, the yolk adds richness and texture, and the steak turns what could easily have been a side dish into one of the most substantial plates on the table. This is the dish that keeps me coming back time and time again.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, my guest broke a glass. To be fair to her, it was entirely accidental, though somehow executed with a degree of whimsy. Still, there are few sounds capable of cutting through a busy dining room quite like a glass shattering, and there was something particularly amusing about watching a woman in matching goose apparel become, however briefly, the center of attention in a packed West Village restaurant. And, surprisingly, not for her anserine appearance.
And yet, oddly enough, the moment fit. Chada has standout dishes and genuinely excellent cocktails, but the room never lets its polish harden into preciousness. Somewhere between the thoughtful food, the crowded tables and the occasional bit of chaos, you remember that this is still, above all else, a cozy neighborhood restaurant. It is the kind of place that slips easily into your rotation and stays there. That might be the quality I have been trying to identify whenever I describe a restaurant as a favorite.
There are restaurants where I feel compelled to pay attention. I appreciate the technique, marvel at the sourcing and carefully work my way through whatever experience has been designed for me. I love many of those restaurants. But loving a restaurant and wanting it to become part of your life are slightly different things.
Chada is good enough to reward scrutiny, but relaxed enough that scrutiny is optional. You can spend several minutes discussing the interplay between coconut, curry and beef in a short rib dish, or you can order an excellent cocktail, eat an irresponsible quantity of fried rice and spend the evening laughing with the person across from you. Ideally, you can do both.
Dessert brought us back toward simplicity with coconut ice cream, a fitting way to close a meal that frequently moves between straightforward ideas and surprisingly elaborate executions.
By then, I had also figured out why my dinner companion had stuck in my mind as such a particularly fitting guest for the evening. It was not simply the Silly Goose University shirt, although that certainly helped. Some of the most interesting people are difficult to assign to a single category. They can be polished without being stiff, thoughtful without becoming self-serious and perfectly comfortable moving between a cocktail dress and a pair of goose socks. The contradiction is part of the appeal.
My favorite restaurants tend to work the same way. Chada can be elegant without demanding elegance from you. Its food can be nuanced without becoming inaccessible. Its chefs can take what they do seriously while still producing something as gleefully over-the-top as ribeye-topped beef tallow fried rice. Even the cocktails manage to carry cultural history while remaining, above everything else, extremely fun to drink.
Maybe that is ultimately what separates the restaurants I admire from the restaurants I call favorites. The best ones impress you. The favorites give you somewhere you want to come back to, preferably with interesting company.
Broken glass optional.
