Food Critic: Thai chef cooks up authentic, tasty cuisine in Kyiv’s Sakurakai

Editor’s note: Eating out in Ukraine is a gamble. To bring you honest food reviews, Kyiv Post writers go to restaurants unannounced, pay for their own meals and never accept favors from restaurateurs.

Despite a direct flight between Bangkok and Kyiv, Thai food is a rare find in Ukraine.

Traditional Thai ingredients like lemongrass, coconut milk, bean sprouts, red chilis, soy noodles and curry, among others ,cost a fortune and are sold only in a handful of markets in Kyiv.

In this regard, the Kyiv Post was pleased to discover Sakurakai and its Thai chef-managed kitchen, which served two delightfully tasty meals.

My dining mate and I bypassed the soup menu, which curiously lacked the traditional, yet simple, hot and sour chicken soup, a must for any serious Thai restaurant. Instead we went straight for the appetizers. I was craving spring rolls (Hr 58), whose soybean noodle crust was crisped to perfection. Most likely deep fried in a wok, they were filled with shitake mushrooms, sweet pepper, sesame seeds, coriander root and ginger and fiery red spicy and sweet dipping sauce. It was aromatic and packed full of flavor without any ingredient superseding the other.

The Thai fare served in Podil’s Sakurakai restaurant doesn’t disappoint either in taste or with its simplistic Asian interior. (Joseph Sywenkyj)

Mix Sate (Hr 79) was the second starter of thinly sliced pieces of chicken and pork on two wooden sticks garnished with soy sauce and sesame seeds. It came with a pasty crushed peanut and curry dipping sauce. The aftertaste of the curry had a nice kick.

We washed this down with Staropramen draft beer (Hr 20).

Still on the lookout for traditional food in our selections for the main course, we were again shocked. This time lemongrass was missing in the dishes and coconut milk was rarely used. Lemongrass, however, is easy to grow indoors, just like parsley.

But there was plenty of Thai curry and Phad Thai, stir fried noodles with various condiments, from which to choose.

I opted for Phad Sam Siam (Hr 158) from the wok menu, a type of dish the Thai mainly borrowed from the Chinese. The difference is in the amount of grease that goes with frying – the Thai cook it light. It’s a wok tossed dish of sauted shrimps and scallops, shitake mushrooms, and vegetables in a soy-oyster sauce. The latter is labor intensive to prepare from scratch.

I asked for it to be prepared “suicide” hot knowing that the kitchen creates mild dishes to suit the spicy-averse palate of Ukrainian food goers. The bland steamed rice was a nice counterbalance to the spicy dish.

My partner’s Kvai Teo Kya Hai (Hr 79), basically a chicken Phad Thai dish, had the similar taste that I’m accustomed to in U.S. Thai restaurants. The chicken was tender, had plenty of cute bean sprouts, green onions, rice noodles, soy and eggs. Again, it was light and not saucy or overloaded with any specific herbs.

I enjoyed the experience. Sakurakai has a simple Asian interior with bamboo stalks partitioning tables for privacy yet allow for freedom of movement. It’s intimately lit as screens with depictions of dragons and elephants drape over the windows.

I understand many ethnic restaurants are limited in the range they could offer given the availability of ingredients in Ukraine, but this place has enough to choose from and is creative with the Thai ingredients it uses.

As usual, the service wasn’t something to write home about. Although English speaking, our waitress didn’t give herself the chance to practice it as often as we’d have liked – she could’ve been more attentive to put it mildly.

Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].