On an uncharacteristically gray and chilly August weeknight, the line for restaurateur Earl Ninsom’s latest venture, Hat Yai, extends onto the sidewalk. It’s located on a small, busy strip of road on NE Killingsworth Street, next to Portland mainstays like Podnah’s Pit and buzzy taco bar La Taq. But today, even perpetually crowded Podnah’s seems comparatively serene.
It seems that Ninsom has an unerring sense for what will make an incredibly successful restaurant. Langbaan, his exquisite Thai supper club, has earned raves from the likes of legendary gourmand Ruth Reichl and a reservation list booked six months in advance.
Hat Yai, named after a city in far southern Thailand, couldn’t be more different. It’s casual. Customers line up at the counter and stand to wait for a space to open up at one of the tables. The menu is based on southern Thailand cuisine, which bears certain similarities to southern American cuisine in that fried chicken is a mainstay of both.
By far the most popular item on the menu is the Hat Yai combo, a tray containing a piece of Hat Yai fried chicken, a spicy chili dipping sauce, a bowl of Malayu-style curry and a hot fried roti (you can add an extra wing and sticky rice for another $3). Hat Yai (the city) is famous for its fried chicken and it’s a recipe that one of the Hat Yai (the restaurant) chefs, Duangduean Tattaruji, is very familiar with, given that he is from there.
On a side note, Hat Yai’s other two chefs are certainly no slouches: Taweesak Teesompong cooked for three years at Nahm, one of Asia’s most acclaimed restaurants, and Amporn Khayanha has worked at Ninsom’s flagship restaurant PaaDee.
Once you’ve eaten the chicken’s crisp, sweet, spicy skin, you can dip the tender meat in either the chile dipping sauce or the rich, sweet curry, redolent of chiles and coconut milk. I recommend ordering an extra roti, a savory fried flatbread, to sop up the last few dregs of curry. With an extra roti, wing and sticky rice, two people can share one combo.
But that would deprive you of the chance to sample the rest of the menu. The menu cautions that the Southern Thai ground pork is “Thai spicy” and it is — but it has an herbal brightness that’s worth the four or five beers that you’ll down while trying to eat it. The soy-cured short ribs are braised in coconut milk until they are so tender that they fall apart at the touch of a fork, and we highly recommend spooning the sauce — full of shallots and cilantro — over your sticky rice.
And as if the food wasn’t attraction enough, the drink menu is designed by bartender Alan Akwai, of the popular Portland French bistro St. Jacks. My personal favorite is the coconut mango horchata, which can be made with or without rum. Served in a mason jar packed with ice, the coconut rice horchata is the perfectly cool, creamy accompaniment to the peppery fried chicken. Several others in our party were addicted to the tamarind whiskey smash, a sweet and fruity concoction of bourbon, tamarind, mint, lemon, cane sugar and soda.
It’s not a restaurant that you can visit every week — the chicken, curry and roti are far too rich for your heart to bear eating them more than once a month — but Hat Yai might be the perfect place to spend a warm evening on the patio, surreptitiously wiping your greasy fingers on your pant leg and cooling your fiery mouth with swallows of local kölsch or house-made horchata. It’s no wonder that the line has gotten longer every time I’ve been there, but luckily, the speedy service ensures that tables are turned over quickly. Luckily, the Northwest Indian summer extends long into the fall. We’ll definitely be back.
