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Fish Cheeks
Fish Cheeks opened in 2017 in Manhattan's NoHo neighborhood, founded by chef Chat Suansilphong alongside restaurateurs from the Uncle Boons restaurant group, built around a seafood-forward Thai menu that leaned into bold, structured tasting-menu-adjacent presentation rather than a casual street-food format. The restaurant's design, featuring a large mounted sailfish and nautical decor, reflected its seafood-centric menu directly, and dishes like its whole fried fish and crab fried rice became particularly celebrated among New York food critics for balancing serious technique with genuinely bold, assertive Thai flavor profiles. Fish Cheeks received strong critical reviews upon opening, including recognition from the New York Times, part of a broader wave of New York restaurants in the 2010s specifically elevating Thai cuisine's presentation and pricing to match the fine-dining treatment more commonly given to French or Japanese restaurants. Fish Cheeks's combination of its seafood-specific Thai menu and its role in a broader elevation of Thai cuisine's fine-dining presentation in New York has made it one of the more critically significant modern Thai restaurants in the city's recent culinary history.
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Jitlada
Jitlada has operated in a Thai Town strip mall on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles since 1993, and it became widely known specifically for its Southern Thai cooking under chef Suthiporn "Tui" Sungkamee, whose intensely spicy, regionally specific menu set it apart from the milder, more generalized Thai food found at most American restaurants. The restaurant built a devoted following among serious Los Angeles food writers and chefs specifically for dishes rarely found on other American Thai menus, including a extensive selection of Southern Thai curries and dishes built around ingredients like sator beans that most other restaurants don't stock or prepare. Jitlada's menu grew to include a specific "if you dare" section for its spiciest dishes, a direct challenge to diners that became part of the restaurant's broader identity and reputation among Los Angeles food enthusiasts specifically seeking out the most intense, authentic versions of Southern Thai cuisine available in the city. Jitlada's combination of its specifically Southern Thai regional focus and its willingness to serve genuinely intense, uncompromising spice levels has made it one of the most respected and specifically challenging Thai restaurants anywhere in the country among serious regional-cuisine enthusiasts.
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