Portland food
fromEater Portland
5 days agoFind Bold Flavors in a Buzzy Space at OK Chicken and Khao Soi
OK Chicken and Khao Soi offers a vibrant Northern Thai dining experience with standout dishes like Khao Soi and Peek Gai Tod Ka-Min.
Despite the constant churn of new development on SE Division, the labyrinthine amalgam of interlocking structures that once housed the original Pok Pok has remained vacant for more than half a decade. The Northern Thai comfort food chain began as a food cart and ended as an empire, with outposts in LA, Las Vegas, and Brooklyn, along with a small constellation of Portland locations.
The space was once home to Soho's last surviving adult cinema, and it still hums with that energy: loud music, tightly packed tables and a sense of near chaos that nods to the buzz of its pop-up days. Sustainability also underpins the project. Khao Bird is B-Corp certified and committed to seasonal, local produce, working with Sussex suppliers including the 3,500-acre rewilding project Knepp Estate, alongside a network of small-scale London producers.
Narkara's boldly flavored and unfamiliar dishes would kill in a utilitarian setting along some semi-decrepit stretch of eastern Chinatown - think Mam or Ha's - but will the city's more adventurous eaters be lured inside such a generically opulent room, on such a normie block? In the early going, the answer seems to be yes. Here is the scene at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday night, when nearly every table was taken.