Kin Shop (New York, NY)

In general, I don't like to chase after trendy new restaurants. It's hard to predict how an establishment will develop once the opening furor has died down, on the basis of the first few days or even the first few weeks. Service is often disorganized for at least the first week. And worst of all, there are often big crowds and long waits, both of which dampen my appetite and enthusiasm for a place considerably.

Luckily, Harold Dieterle's much-publicized new restaurant, Kin Shop, which opened on October 11, suffered none of these shortcomings on a recent evening when we dropped by for an early dinner. There were only a handful of other diners around 7 p.m. and happily, we were able to walk in without a reservation.


The space is inviting, decorated in soothing greens and pale blonde wood. One narrow wall, near the front, is covered with an eye-catching Rorschach test pattern -- which is as soothing or non-soothing as you want it to be.) There's an open kitchen in the far back where Dieterle (famously the Top Chef Season One winner and chef-owner of popular West Village restaurant, Perilla) was on view, hard at work alongside three or four sous chefs.

Kin Shop's Thai-inspired menu is divided into three main categories: salads and soups, vegetables, and noodles and curries. By description, most menu offerings sounded like fairly literal translations of Thai prototypes. But in each of the dishes we tried, there was at least one interesting twist to mark it as a Dieterle original.

[Zagat has an frank interview with Dieterle, where he explains the inspiration for the restaurant. I get the sense that he's a bit tired of having to explain to people why an Italian American chef is cooking nouveau Thai food.]

Here's what we ordered:

Appetizers

Garam Masala and Tomato Soup

Fried duck tongue and green papaya salad with mint, snakebeans, peanuts and pomegranate chili dressing. This was a complexly flavored salad that might actually be better than the original. Fried duck tongue was pleasantly chewy and not too tough. I didn't love the breading, though, which became a bit cold and hard after contact with the cold salad. The pomegranate chili dressing was a great substitute for the usual fish sauce, lime juice and chili dressing. It was so zesty and complex I didn't even miss the pungency. 

Garam Masala & Tomato Soup with tofu, mung beans & holy basil. This was the only dish of the evening I wasn't really crazy about. It was interesting and not completely unenjoyable, but flavors (which also included a touch of coconut milk) were so all over the place, it felt like a bit of a train wreck. I suppose it reminded me too much of my own disastrous early renditions of sambar for me to really like it. The mung beans thickened the soup in much the same way toor dal does sambar, but remained too firm by Asian standards. (We like our beans soft to the point of mushiness.) The dish would have been more coherent without the tofu. 

Mains

Massaman Goat

Massaman: Braised Goat with fried shallots, purple yams, mustard greens & toasted coconut.  This was a very, very good dish using a pleasantly gamy cut of goat from the neck, I believe, since we were left with a piece of vertebrae. I love that Dieterle left the meat on the bone, a practice that's underappreciated in the U.S., where we like to sanitize our meat and pretend like it is not really from animals. The dish looked like a gorgeous mess, with bits of greens sprouting from various parts of the meat, beautiful diced purple yams, and a snowstorm of coconut over it all. Flavors were incredibly full and well balanced. It's not the type of dish I would've wanted to eat in a hot Thai climate, but it was a perfect autumn comfort food for New York City and very well executed. 

Yellow Curry with Rabbit

Sour Yellow: Steamed Rabbit Leg with multi-grain rice, eggplant chutney & thai basil. Justin and I had delicious street food not too different from this dish in Bangkok, made using chicken rather than rabbit. Though this version had much less stinky shrimp paste, fish sauce, lime and heat than its Thai counterparts, flavors were full and didn't taste dumbed down. The rabbit was fall-off-the-bone tender without being overcooked and nicely infused with flavor through and through. Though the rabbit was presented in a banana leaf, I'm not sure I was able to detect the scent of banana leaf in the dish. It could have been overwhelmed by the other strong flavors present.

Drinks

Sohm and King

We ordered two cocktails. The South by Southwest was a fine, but forgettable blend of Maker's, guava juice and lemongrass. Lemongrass flavor was very, very faint. The Sohm and Khing (right) -- I didn't ask about the name, but I should have -- was a very international mix of house infused ginger Mekhong (a Thai sugarcane and rice liquor... which is, incidentally, kind of horrible, straight), domaine de canton (a semi-obscure French ginger liquor), aperol (an Italian liquor similar to Campari), grapefruit bitters and lemon soda. This was a well conceived, interesting drink, but this formulation included a bit too much of the aperol for my personal tastes. It's a rich, velvety, bitter, grown-up cocktail that I could imagine sipping in a dressing gown while lounging about in a library full of old, leather-bound books. 

We were far too full for dessert. But we didn't feel too bad about abstaining as the dessert menu seems rather limited at the moment: There were three ice creams (one was Thai iced tea, but I don't remember the others), three sorbets and some sort of bread pudding on offer. 

So, what to make of Kin Shop? I'm glad it's not pretending to serve authentic Thai food. (It doesn't.) When you place expectations of authenticity aside, the food is well thought out and well executed for the most part. And judging by the excellent massaman goat preparation, there seems to be no little skill in the kitchen. But of course, it's hard to generalize from such a small sampling. Next time, we take on the noodle dishes.

Other Girl Eats City Reviews for Kin Shop:

• December 14, 2010
• March 20, 2011

469 6th Ave

New York 10011

(212) 675-4295