Pig and Khao

Cuisine	Thai, SEA (Other)
Price	$$$ (31-50)
Rating	5/10
Last Visit	Aug. 12, 2019
Location	New York: Lower East Side

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General Notes

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Pig and Khao is a unique restaurant in the Lower East Side featuring southeast Asian food, particularly Filipino and Thai food. This was my first experience with Filipino food, and I was a bit disappointed. Something about each of the flavor combinations just felt slightly off to me, but I'm not sure exactly how to describe it. Perhaps I'm just not used to Filipino flavors. I think that it is probably still worth checking out; maybe just try some different dishes from the ones I ordered.

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Positives

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> The kitchen is right out in the open, and you can directly see it from the restaurant. You have the opportunity to directly see how the kitchen functions behind the scenes!
> They offer a $42 restaurant week tasting menu with five courses: a rice, two items from their "small plates", one item from their "large plates", and one dessert. Be warned though, the large plate item is downsized to be just like a small-size item.

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Negatives

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> The downside of having the kitchen right in the restaurant is that if you're sitting at the bar, your clothes will smell very, very strong after your meal.
> Realistically speaking, the restaurant week tasting menu is not that great of a deal. The desserts are not great, and the "large plate" item is downsized. You're probably better off sharing a bunch of different items as a group (most of the items are relatively sharable).

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Dishes Tasted

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• ★☆☆☆ Turon -- Banana fritter, salted caramel ice cream, chocolate sauce. The banana is fried well, but the dish as a whole is way too salty. It overpowers the other components of the dish.
• ★★☆☆ BBQ Baby Back Ribs -- Very tender, but something about the flavor of this dish felt a little bit off, and I don't quite know how to describe it. The restaurant week portion is much smaller than the normal large plate; probably half as large.
• ★★☆☆ Pork Belly Adobo -- Soy sauce, vinegar, szechuan peppercorns, crispy garlic, slow poached egg. As a whole the dish is good - the egg was cooked perfectly, the pork was tender, and the flavor was good (although it felt a little bit strange to me). However, I don't understand why the pork was deep-fried. It created a hard exterior that didn't really feel crispy; just difficult to chew and unpleasant.
• ★★☆☆ Coconut Rice -- Very good flavor and I was initially really impressed. But after a few bites I found the rice to be far too sweet. I'm used to rice as a way to tie together different intensely flavored dishes (like the ones I got). This really couldn't do that.
• ★★★☆ Green Papaya Salad -- Charred chicken, green papaya, crispy taro, peanuts, herbs, fish sauce, lime juice. Conceptually, a very good dish - each component adds an essential textural component (like the crispy taro) or brightens the dish with acidity. Personally, the texture of papaya is not my favorite though.