Brooklyn’s Kru Is The Vibrant Future Of Thai Food In America

Chef Ohm Suansilphong serves vivid and uncompromising Thai food at Kru in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Kru means “guru” or “mentor” in Thai, so Suansilphong is here to honor his culinary teachers. He’s here to showcase recipes that time forgot. But he’s also creating the future of Thai cuisine in America as he respectfully reinterprets century-old preparations with local and international ingredients and refined cooking techniques.

A pla salad features a resplendent rainbow of cauliflower with crabmeat and fierce and funky hits of umami, spiciness and different textures. Beautifully assembled relish trays come with a bounty of produce and assertively flavored but skillfully balanced dips. (Kru even has beanies that say Krudité because a strong merch game is appreciated in Brooklyn.)

And then there’s the kaeng pa, an intensely spicy jungle curry. Suansilphong uses beef tongue, which is a protein you don’t often see at Thai restaurants, and some beef head.

“The technique is different, too,” he says. “In Thailand, you would just boil it.”

Instead, Suansilphong slow-cooks the meat for two hours until it is deeply tender. He also slices and separates each tongue into three parts because he’s noticed there are different textures at play.

Suansilphong and his wife, third-generation dessert maker Kiki “Kiss” Supap, opened Kru last fall. For Suansilphong, the restaurant is the culmination of a career in which he co-founded Manhattan’s Fish Cheeks after working in Thailand (under David Thompson and Prin Polsuk at Bangkok’s world-beating Nahm) and Australia (at Long Grain). But the story began long before that: Suansilphong’s family owned a restaurant in Thailand’s Sukhothai province. And he helped make food in his home kitchen as a child.

Now, after studying numerous old cookbooks and thinking about how he wants to merge sophistication and rustic food in different ways, Suansilphong is writing a new chapter.

He and Supap run a restaurant that was recently named a James Beard Award semifinalist. (The finalists will be announced on March 29.) Kru is a total-package destination with wine and cocktails that pair well with Suansilphong’s cooking. There’s also fermented rice yogurt ice cream to cool your palate afterwards. Not surprisingly, the refreshing dessert here is topped with seasonal fruit.

Kru shares a philosophy with other buzzworthy destinations like Manhattan’s Dhamaka, where chef Chintan Pandya is focused on serving dishes you don’t find in other restaurants. Kru is also part of a movement that is taking Thai food to new heights in America. There are now wonderfully revamped Thai restaurants (Anajak, Lotus of Siam) sharing the spotlight with enduring pioneers (Jitlada, SriPraPhai) and no-holds-barred newcomers (Ugly Baby, Northern Thai Food Club).

And Kru is proof that you can respect history but still create something that’s distinct from everyone else. One thing that inspired Suansilphong when he looked at recipes, some that dated back to the 19th century, was how chefs at Thailand’s royal palace made dishes with international ingredients like almonds, ham and olives. The aristocracy traveled around the world and tried different foods. This is really the origin story for Kru’s multi-hued relish trays, which feature almonds, ham and olives.

“We have to accept that a lot of the old cookbooks were for the royal family and wealthy people,” Supap says. “But we all know that regular people and royal people in Thailand eat the same flavors. When you have time, more resources, you can make it more beautiful. You can have time to perfect each of the ingredients that you want to put together.”

This is why, for example, the vegetable arrangements for each of the relish trays on the menu is different. A similar level of attention to detail is apparent when you look at Kru’s selection of organic and sustainable wines like grenache blanc, riesling, melon de Bourgogne and barbera.

“The thought process we’ve discussed has been about how we can elevate the experience,” says Jeff Sivayathorn, a partner at Kru. “A lot of Thai restaurants have great food. But some of them are missing the service or the dessert or a beverage. For us, we want to have wines that pair well with our food: wines that have great acid, which is the key to pairing with Thai food. We don’t have a big bold Napa red. And for the cocktails, it’s our take on classic cocktails with the ingredients and the spices we have in-house.”

So what does a James Beard semifinalist nod mean for a restaurant like Kru?

“It makes us want to work even harder,” Sivayathorn says.

“We’re honored and shocked,” Supap says. “I think it’s changed the way we think about ourselves. We’ve always been trying to do our best, based on what we can do. But now that we have this attached to our name, we have to maintain the level of quality.”