Andy's Thai Kitchen

A few weeks ago, my sister Lizzie was home for Thanksgiving break. We decided to go out for some crazy ethic food. We settled on Andy's Thai Kitchen in Lakeview. ATK just opened and is known for being very authentic. This was very exciting for me as 99% of Thai restaurants in Chicago have the exact same menu.
Finding one with unique food I've never had before was a real treat.

Lizzie and her boyfriend Kevin picked me up at my office and we were off to Lakeview. The food was incredible. It was extremely authentic and seemed to focus heavily on Northern Thai cuisine. Many of the dishes would be much more at home in Chang Mai as opposed to Bangkok. While the food was ethereal, the service was the worst I've experienced in recent memory.

I'll start out by talking about what was good, the cuisine. We started out with with a lovely papaya salad called Som Tum Poo Plara. This was a standard shredded papaya salad with a spicy dressing. It also contained dried shrimp had an interesting texture and strongly concentrated shrimp flavor.  It was garnished with blue crab in shell which seemed to be more for decoration than anything else, the meat was next to impossible to extract. The waitress warned us that it was a "stinky" salad due to the inclusion mudfish curd. The curd definitely added a gamey, fishiness to the salad that worked very well.

Som Tum Poo Plara

For my main course I had the Kao Soy. This dish is one of the most popular dishes in Northern Thailand, their answer to Southern Thailand's Pad Thai. It is a soup like dish made with deep-fried crispy egg noodles, pickled cabbage, shallots, lime, and ground chillies. All these ingredients are served in a spicy coconut curry broth. The dish was delightful. The flavor combination was extremely unique and powerful, unlike anything I've ever had before.

Kao Soy

Where the food was amazing, the service was unacceptable. It took about twenty five minutes for the waitress to acknowledge our table.  I definitely value food quality over service but this place really pushed the limits of what I can tolerate. Once we ordered it took another 45-50 minutes for appetizers/salads to come out. I understand that they prepare each dish to order from scratch. I also understand that quality takes time and is worth waiting for. Still the ridiculous pace of the service was unreasonable.

I will be returning to ATK. The food was amazing and I'm not aware of another restaurant in Chicago that executes authentic Northern Thai cuisine on such a high level. I'm hoping the poor service was due to temporary under staffing. If the service does not improve on my second visit, I don't think ATK will be included on my regular rotation.