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Lotus of Siam
Lotus of Siam opened in 1993 in a Las Vegas strip mall, founded by Saipin Chutima, whose specifically Northern Thai and Isan-region cooking set the restaurant apart from the more generic pan-Thai menus common at most American Thai restaurants of the era. The restaurant received national attention after food critic Jonathan Gold named it the best Thai restaurant in the United States and, at one point, listed it among his choices for best restaurant in the country overall, a genuinely unusual level of critical acclaim for a strip-mall restaurant located specifically to serve the local Thai community rather than tourists. The restaurant's namesake dish, whole fried catfish topped with green mango salad, along with its khao soi curry noodle soup, became specifically celebrated items that drew diners well beyond Las Vegas's Thai community, and Chutima's daughter Bank has continued running the restaurant's expanded operations since. Lotus of Siam's combination of its specifically Northern Thai and Isan regional focus and its unlikely rise from a local strip-mall restaurant to nationally acclaimed dining destination has made it one of the most critically significant Thai restaurants anywhere in the country.
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Pok Pok
Pok Pok opened in 2005 in Portland, Oregon, founded by chef Andy Ricker, who built the restaurant directly around dishes and techniques he'd learned during years of extended personal travel and research throughout Thailand rather than an Americanized interpretation of the cuisine. The restaurant's Vietnamese-influenced Ike's Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings became one of its most specifically celebrated dishes, a chicken wing preparation that drew significant national food media attention and helped establish Ricker's broader reputation as one of the most serious American chefs working in Southeast Asian cuisine specifically. Ricker expanded Pok Pok into a small restaurant group with locations in Portland and New York, alongside a cookbook and a canned drinking-vinegar product line, before ultimately closing most of the group's locations in the 2020s, including the original Division Street restaurant, as Ricker shifted focus to new projects. Pok Pok's combination of Andy Ricker's deeply researched, direct-from-Thailand culinary approach and its outsized influence on how a generation of American chefs and diners came to think about serious regional Thai cooking has made it one of the most historically significant Thai restaurants in the country's recent culinary history.
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