Koko Lists
Start a new list
Log in
Sign up
← New random battle
Koko Battle
Tap your pick.
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.
VS
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.
Next battle
Full comparison
About Pok Pok
About Fish Cheeks
Popular Battles
1984 vs. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
1 votes
Friends vs. Curb Your Enthusiasm
1 votes
Ideogram vs. Sora
1 votes
Navy Pier vs. Bishop Museum
1 votes
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree vs. Skittles
1 votes
George Carlin vs. Oprah Winfrey
1 votes
