Home-cooked Thai food | Let’s Eat

A Thai restaurant without pad Thai on the menu? That would be Kalaya, opening this week in Bella Vista. I'll explain why.

Also up this week are looks at the happy hour at a beer bar in KoP and a new Korean tabletop-grilling experience on the Main Line. I also revisit an old favorite BYOB on South Street West (or Southwest Center City or Graduate Hospital or whatever the heck Realtors are calling the area nowadays).

Craig LaBan is also here to discuss a controversy among food critics.

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— Michael Klein

Thai-born former restaurateur Chutatip Suntaranon ("just call me 'Nok'"), armed with a degree from the French Culinary Institute in New York, has been cooking for her Queen Village neighbors for years. My-Le Vuong, a Vietnamese-born veteran restaurant manager with some of the big names in Manhattan, moved in across the street five years ago. Friendship blossomed, they led cooking classes and started a catering business, and now they've just opened Kalaya, a homey, 30-seat BYOB at 764 S. Ninth St. (215-385-3777), two doors from Ralph's Italian restaurant in Bella Vista. The space was last a short-lived Ralph's to-go shop. Say it "ka-la-YA."

"It's the same cooking that you will eat in a Thai restaurant in Thailand," says Suntaranon, who is influenced by the cooking of her Chinese-born mother, Kalaya (whose style is the Malay-Chinese hybrid Peranakan), her grandmother ("more adventurous"), and her great-grandmother ("upscale").

Everything in the kitchen comes from scratch, down to the chili pastes (plural). Pad Thai? Not at dinner. “It’s lunch food, a quick meal,” Suntaranon says. But you will find shareable orders of toon tong (a golden pouch filled with potato, curry powder and sweet chili sauce), kua kling (a fiery-spicy Southern Thai toasted beef curry whose lemongrass and kaffir leaf competes with long hots and peppercorns), and moo pad kapi (a stir-fried pork in shrimp paste). There are vegan/vegetarian/gluten-free options on the menu, which helpfully denotes spiciness. (I’m a particular fan of the kang gai khao mun, a rich chicken curry with cilantro, pandan, and coconut rice. How’s this for home cooking? When I interviewed Suntaranon and Vuong back in January, they insisted upon serving me lunch in Suntaranon’s kitchen.)

This week, Kalaya is open 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday. Sunday dinner will be added on April 25, and lunch (and yes, with pad Thai) is on the way.

Ambrosia | Center City

Cozy Italian BYOB replacing the neighborhood fixture Sandy’s at 24th and Locust Streets. Opens April 11.

Charlie's Hamburgers | Folsom

The landmark Delco burger shop will shut down after business April 15 and reopen April 18 in new digs at 237 E. MacDade Blvd. Details are here.

Hops Brewerytown | Brewerytown

The former Flying Fish Crafthouse at 31st and Master Streets reimagined by the crew behind Bernie's and the newly reopened U.S. Hotel Bar & Grill (see below). Sixteen beers and three wines on tap, plus cocktails, six TVs, a projection screen, two pool tables, foosball, and shuffleboard.

Kalaya | Bella Vista

See above.

Olly | Queen Village

American bistro at Fifth and Bainbridge Streets from the owners of Southwark and Ambra a block away; a pizzeria next door called Gigi is in the works.

Separatist South Philly | East Passyunk

Upstate Pennsylvania brewery has set an April 11 opening date at 12th and Morris Streets, just steps from East Passyunk Avenue.

Songsan | Ardmore

See below.

U.S. Hotel Bar & Grill | Manayunk

Long-running Manayunk destination at 4439 Main St. reopened last week after a top-to-bottom redo under new ownership (Bernie's and Hops Brewerytown). American classics on the menu, Prohibition-era cocktails, wine list of primarily Americans, 9 beers, 4 TVs.

No closings to report this week.

City Works, 220 Main St., King of Prussia Town Center; 3:30-6 p.m. dailyDid someone say 90 beers on tap, a quarter of which are locals? That seems to be the big draw at this Chicago-based pourhouse, whose wide-open, high-ceilinged atmospherics, wall of TVs, and roll-up doors give it an air of constant busy-ness.

Happy hour deals are a good bet, especially when the big doors are up. The price of four appetizers (pretzel bites, firecracker rolls, Nashville hot and Southern fried popcorn chicken, and perfectly greasy cheese curds served with a smoky tomato couli) gets cut in half to $4.

Certain wines are half-price and a few beers are discounted to $4, which is in itself not a big deal because City Works’ regular price for many 6-ounce sample pours is $3. At a place like this, you’d likely want to try at least a couple.

Songsan, 66 Rittenhouse Place, Ardmore

Ardmore got itself a rock-solid Korean BYOB last year with the opening of Bam Bam Kitchen (31 E. Lancaster Ave.), a bright and buzzy spot known for its bibimbap, japchae, and Korean fried chicken. (By buzzy: How many other restaurants have actual buzzers on the tables to summon staff?)

Now the Main Line Korean scene is really cooking with the recent opening of Songsan, a wood-clad charmer on Rittenhouse Place smack between Rittenhouse Deli and Ardmore BBQ. Songsan, an offshoot of a similar-named restaurant in Paris, offers barbecue grills on its 12 tables. Though the grills are electric (rather than charcoal- or gas-fired), the experience makes for good, tasty theater. Buy in for about $60 a couple, and the beef, chicken, and pork cuts and an assortment of side dishes (banchan) start coming. Your server, wielding tongs and scissors, handles the stirring and cutting of meat.

Those who skip the tabletop experience can order from a small menu of Korean staples, including decent Korean fried chicken (offered in only spicy and mild). In another surprise for a 48-seat restaurant in Lower Merion, there are bottles of soju and four beers on tap.

Hours: 4-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, noon-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, noon-8 p.m. Sunday.

Pumpkin, 1713 South St.

Fifteen years ago, chef Ian Maroney and girlfriend Hillary Bor sank everything into a 26-seat restaurant on an emerging block of South Street. (Maroney knew from tiny. He came from Little Fish, all of 22 seats, across town.) Pumpkin was and is now still one of the go-to neighborhood BYOBs — an intimate experience just fancy enough for date night and perfect for small groups of out-of-town relatives, with charming service. (It made critic Craig LaBan's list of favorites, too.)

Now comes change. After doing the usual appetizer/entrée/dessert thing, Maroney has joined the movement to eliminate courses. "This is how we eat," he told me last week.

You want to make a meal of, say, an order of great white oysters, striped bass crudo, carrot soup, and charred broccoli with stracciatella and bagna cauda? Go for it. By the same token, you can also just put together your own four-dish tasting menu for $65, or visit on Sunday and get the $45 prix-fixe.

Whatever you do, get the salt potatoes. A staple of Maroney's Syracuse roots, they are small, tender, white potatoes typically served at seafood bakes. Maroney serves them simply with Maryland lump crab and butter infused with just enough Old Bay seasoning to cut the richness.

While the dining room has been spruced up over the years, Pumpkin is still cash-only. Hours: 5:30—10 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 5-10 p.m. Sunday. (Unlike most BYOBs that button up at 9 p.m. or so, you can actually sit down at 10 p.m.)

The first bar for babies? Craft Hall, Avram Hornik's expansive, 35,000-square-foot, parent-approved brewery, bakery, restaurant and playground at the edge of Northern Liberties, might best be summarized as alt-Chuck E. Cheese.

The Harrowgate neighborhood in North Philadelphia is becoming a home for small food businesses. Developers, who have invested in some of these businesses, hope they will revitalize a long-struggling neighborhood.

Soft-shell crab season came early this year. Here’s where to get them.

Read Craig LaBan’s answer to your dining questions here.