Ugly Child early on.
Picture: Liz Clayman
A meal on the Carroll Gardens restaurant Ugly Child is atomic, particularly when the duck salad or kua kling are on the desk. Opened in late 2017 by the chef Sirichai Sreparplarn, the vacation spot for blast-your-face-off Thai meals stood out in a neighborhood largely recognized for New American brunches and Italian American time warps. But Ugly Child rapidly turned considered Brooklyn’s, if not the entire metropolis’s, greatest Thai restaurant, a spot the place, New York as soon as wrote, “every part looks like a pure manifestation of its chef-owner’s style and persona.” However earlier than the top of this month, the house owners will manifest the top of Ugly Child: Through social media, they introduced that they’re shutting it down for good.
“We’re closing as a result of chef Sirichai is simply actually drained and wishes an extended, lengthy break,” one of many enterprise’s companions writes. “Whereas we’ll miss the restaurant and all the good issues that include it, the upside is that this can give chef Sirichai the prospect to work on a cookbook, which he’s lengthy been desirous to do.”
Born in Bangkok, Sreparplarn moved to New York in his late 20s to check journalism. He labored at his aunt’s Thai restaurant within the East Village, and the curry pastes got here calling. Within the mid-2010s, he established himself with Kanlaya Supachana as one of many conspirators behind Purple Hook’s thrilling Chiang Mai and Kao Soy. On the latter, he advised the New York Occasions, their aim was to show New Yorkers to “the true meals from the north” of Thailand. These eating places acquired acclaim, however neither lasted. On Smith Avenue, Sreparplarn went solo, and his profession took off. Bon Appétit ranked Ugly Child No. 3 on its checklist of the nation’s “Greatest New Eating places,” then-Occasions critic Pete Wells rhapsodized in regards to the fried coconut muffins referred to as tue ka ko, and right here at New York we praised a deep-fried complete sea bream that was so compulsively edible it made “the evil food-science technicians” come throughout “like amateurs.” Most significantly, it — together with a couple of different spots — helped expose a era of Brooklyn white guys to the fun of extremely spicy meals and allowed different operators to faucet into the beforehand nonexistent market.
As Tammie Teclemariam wrote a couple of months in the past, “Glorious Thai eating places — spots that promote regionally impressed menus filtered by particular person cooks’ experiences and sensibilities — have gotten the norm” in New York. This new norm was established by a wave of Thai eating places that, through the 2010s, introduced the delicacies to new areas of the town, and included Sreparplarn’s companies. Earlier than, Thai meals exterior Queens largely meant gloopy inexperienced curries, and in case you needed high quality papaya salad, you needed to head to Sunnyside’s SriPraPhai (est. 1990) or Elmhurst’s Thaitown. However Isaan mania started to unfold round Manhattan a decade and a half in the past by locations like Somtum Der in addition to eating places opened by Ratchanee Sumpatboon of Elmhurst’s Chao Thai and Astoria’s Podam. These included Larb Ubol, which spawned the mini-chain Lan Larb, and the East Village location of Zabb Elee, which crowds mobbed proper after a J. Kenji López-Alt assessment. In 2012, Andy Ricker opened a department of his Portland restaurant Pok Pok Ny within the “Columbia Avenue Waterfront District.” Ann Redding and Matt Danzer opened Uncle Boon’s the next 12 months, and it stayed mobbed till it closed through the pandemic. Thai Diner, Uncle Boon’s religious successor, continues to be one of many metropolis’s hottest spots.
Extra not too long ago, Zaab Zaab has develop into the most recent Thaitown success story and is on an enlargement tear throughout downtown Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Flushing. There are scene-y successors to Uncle Boon’s like Bangkok Supper Membership, and its predecessor Fish Cheeks, in addition to a handful extra of Brooklyn spots like Sukh.
Ugly Child isn’t a sufferer of its personal success; its reputation hasn’t waned as newer choices have proliferated. In actual fact, it appears to be as buzzing as ever. In 2022, the restaurant stopped taking reservations with a view to, the reason went, serve extra folks. Final 12 months, Zach Schiffman discovered it was the uncommon “unattainable desk” restaurant that was truly as busy because it claimed. The closing information has, after all, introduced crowds who don’t wish to spring for tickets to Bangkok: On Monday, Eater NY’s Emma Orlow reported the restaurant was quoting “two-hour waits” over the weekend. It’s good to exit on high.
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