Kiin Thai Eatery

This placed used to be cafetaesia not too long ago before it was renovated and changed to KIIN. Cafetaesia was great but KIIN is definitely an upgrade. Their menus and dishes have changed a few times but it seems to have been finalized as of 2016. That being sad, there are certain things i like and dislike about the food and beverages here. KIIN manages a modern twist on traditional Thai cuisine. If you’ve got a craving for Thai food, the food here is pretty authentic.
In my experience, some of the food here is on the sweeter side. The curries and stir fry are fragrant and flavorful. I personally always order the Golden bags as one of the starting appetizers. They’re delicious. Also, you can’t possibly go wrong with one of their fried rice paired with a Thai iced tea. On the other hand, would not recommend the wraps/​springrolls (set of 3).
KIIN also has a lunch special and happy hour specials. During the lunch special, you can get spring rolls or a cucumber soup bundled with an entrée for under ten bucks. During happy hour, drinks are half off.
The décor here is modern and trendy. It has that new painted garden feel. KIIN is great for dates or hangouts with friends alike.

Just had the boneless thigh and sticky rice delivered to me. Probably the best Thai I’ve ever had in the world a even Thailand. Last time had the red duck curry.
Would eat here every day!

We had three lunch sets. To be honest, three entrees were too sweet but not that authentic.

This place deserves more than 3.5 stars on Unilocal,in my opinion. My boyfriend had been in search for a Thai restaurant that serves both the pandan chicken and Morning Glory, and this was only one of the two in New York.
The pandan chicken comes wrapped in pandan leaf and with a fantastic brown dipping sauce. It was simply delicious — the meat was perfectly white and just chewy enough. I ate it with the side of white rice they bring.
Morning Glory is a healthy green vegetable dish that complements other meat-​based entrees. It went well with the pork steaks that came with sticky rice.
My only issue was with the pineapple fried rice. If every other dish exceeded expectations, this one fell below them. The rice was awfully dry, there were barely any ingredients like egg and ham in there, and the shrimp on top were not flavorful.
They have great cocktails and service overall — I’m happy I found this place.

Great plating, service, and price point. Very modern ambiance. But I didn’t think the food was that special. We had the Seafood Po Pia as an appetizer. I then ordered the Pad Thai with Shrimp wrapped in an egg crêpe. I thought everything was pretty average.
Will be back for a quick meal if I’m in the area but I’d not go out of my way to try this place.

Great food, good location and good price
Large seating area which is nice for this area.
But the service is not great. Your appetizer soup comes out 3 seconds before your main course.
But I guess for the price it’s what you can expect

Yum. Great place for lunch. I recommend the pad Thai and the beef with garlic. Spring rolls make for a nice appetizer.

I didn’t know that this spot replaced Cafetasia, but I like the change a lot. The interior is more spacious, brighter and trendier. My friend and I got the spicy chicken with spicy fried rice lunch special. It comes with a drink and an appetizer. The dish was a bit spicier than I expected, but the juicy chicken kinda balanced out the spiciness. I’ll be back to try their other thangs!

Location: new Thai place at Nyu. Very out of blue but happy that my friend took me here and enjoy a good night dinner.
The place is spacious compare other stores near NyU. We were there and not a lot of people were there.
food: sorry that j didn’t remember or take pictures of the food. But I ordered the dish which include multiple traditional
Thai food and it was delicious. Also the tofu (appetizer) and fritter are also delicious.
Service: the older lady is very nicer for sure and the younger is so pushy.
Price: acceptable if you come with people and during happy hour
4 stars. Will come back!

Kiin Thai Eatery replaced the old Cafetasia restaurant that was located here, but honestly, there doesn’t seem to a large difference between the two. The menu is extremely similar, prices are comparable, and even the layout is somewhat the same.
I came here for lunch a few days ago, and I wasn’t very impressed by my lunch special. I got the Pineapple fried rice with beef, and there wasn’t very much pineapple in it. The beef was also very chewy, which concerned me about both the quality of the food or the quality of the chef.
Kiin Thai Eatery’s price is priced pretty decently, around $ 10, but this wasn’t a great dining experience. I don’t think I would recommend this place, even if its convinient for most NYU students.

Birthday ladies Anna C. and Maria V. summoned a group of about 20 to descend upon this venue on a Tuesday night with less than one day’s notice to the restaurant, no thanks to the incompetence of those who run Ichi Cellar
Food: I wasn’t blown away by anything because every item here appears to be sweeter than I thought it would be. From the relatively weak drinks to the noodles, it was a sugar fest. Those who have «borderline» blood sugar are hereby forewarned! I do recommend the fried mushrooms though! The Pad See Maw was so ugly that I didn’t bother taking a photograph, but the drinks were adorable! The chicken noodles tasted better than most of the other items I tried.
Service: the servers did not seem to know who ordered what, and our party’s Thai was a bit rusty, so we didn’t know what we ordered either. This caused a bit of confusion but eventually, I just claimed everything as mine (hahaha, so wrong of me). The best part of my experience was being allowed to bring a gargantuan Haagen Dazs ice cream cake (my dear wife bought it for us) to celebrate our birthdays without being charged any fee. Servers even went out of their way to give us a large knife and a bucket of hot water to dip the knife in. This earned the venue an extra star. We decimated the cake without using any hot water though, thanks to Diep V.‘s cake cutting skills.
Décor: the place appeared clean, but what’s with the dark restrooms? What type of illicit activity could possibly be taking place to warrant such darkness? The faucet and sink combination in the restroom made it appear as though the water would splash towards me, but, by some miracle, didn’t.
Tip: happy hour before 7 p.m. Drinks take a while to make because they’re cute. Just order one of every drink and work it off the next day.

Went here during happy hour, great price on drinks and noodles! The atmosphere was very nice, a great place to have lunch or dinner with a friend.
We ordered the seafood po pia as the appetizer, it reminded me of a fancy seafood rangoon. very shareable and came out quick.
The rice vermicelli with curry sauce was okay, I wish it was a bit more spicier. It was more sweet than spicy. Would definitely come back to try their other dishes!

This place is super good for Northern Thai food. Really tastes like home for me. Nham Prik Pu was the best dish we had there. Other really good dishes were Rice Vermicelli with Spicy Curry Sauce (Kha-​Nom Jeen Num Ngieow), ‘Khao soi’ with Chicken Leg (Curry Egg Noodles), and «Sai Oua» Sausage. These are northern dishes that you should order! Generous portions and extremely great flavors. We asked for Thai spicy and it was the right amount of spice.
For dessert, we had Royal Coconut Ice Cream and ‘Num Kang Sai’Icy Mountain (ask for sweetened milk on the side). Both we huge servings, 5 of us had plenty to eat.
Our new favorite Thai restaurant in Manhattan!

The lunch menu is pretty affordable and I like the ability to substitute meats/​proteins.
That being said, my food took quite a while to come out, the spring rolls (though yummy) are tiny, and the pineapple fried rice is severely lacking in pineapple. The good thing about the pineapple fried rice, though, is that it’s definitely more food than it looks!

Ate here with a Gilt City deal — 2 «appetizers», 2 entrees, and 2 drinks. It’s actually part of their usual set lunch menu that is quite reasonable — you get an appetizer and entrée for $ 9 – 11 and add a drink for $ 2. I would come here without a deal and get the lunch specials, but I was sad to not even see the long list of stuff they offer on their real menu.
Service was slow for a slow lunchtime, but acceptable. The waiter was pleasant.
I got the Thai iced tea, which tasted as it should. Slightly on the sweet side, as expected. The Thai tea had too much half/​half or creamer in it, but was large in size and $ 2 for a Thai tea nowadays is hard to find.
The papaya salad was lackluster — it was hardly spicy at all and the flavor was not strong enough as it should be. I would have liked it if it were more tangy and with more spice. The papaya texture was tougher than I’m used to.
The real star of the show was the ‘Prik Pao’ Fried rice with Fried Chicken — it was unexpectedly flavorful and delicious. I would totally return to Kiin Thai just to get this dish. First off, the fried rice is flavorful because it’s got chili pepper sauce (something similar to Sambal Oelek) mixed right into it — beware, though, because it’s got quite the heat packed in it. The fried chicken was fried to perfection and was seasoned in a flavorful, crispy and light seasoning with fried basil all over. It also comes with spicy fish sauce dip if you want to add more salt/​flavor. The meat tender, obviously, because it was all dark meat. The amount of meat you got was very reasonable too. For $ 11, this lunch special is a deal I’d return for.
Summary: solid location and atmosphere, slow service, delicious fried rice and fried chicken entrée.

While I was sad to see Cafetasia go last year, Kiin Thai definitely offers an upscale and delicious option for all of your Thai cravings. I don’t normally eat Thai and walk out thinking, «Wow! That was delicious, authentic, AND didn’t make me feel like I consumed 3 days worth of calories/​oil in one go,» but Kiin Thai surprised me on all accounts.
I went for lunch, when they have awesome specials (appetizer and entrée for around $ 9-​$ 11). This definitely isn’t your usual greasy Seamless Thai; it’s creative, authentic, and off the beaten path for what you usually get at Thai restaurants. I tried the Chicken with Garlic-​Pepper Sauce over rice and while it wasn’t the prettiest thing on the menu, it was certainly delicious (and somewhat healthy? I’ll keep telling myself that). I also tried spring rolls with my special, which were good (and definitely not healthy) but nothing I haven’t had before.
My partner tried the Prik Pao Fried rice with Fried Chicken, which was amazing. It wasn’t horrendously spicy, and the fried chicken was fantastic: crisp, really flavorful, and perfect with the chili fried rice. Our portion sizes were completely different as well, so if you’re extremely hungry, I’d recommend going with the fried chicken instead):
Definitely returning for dinner to try some of their more authentic offerings. And pro tip: they offer a 10% NYU discount if you’re student/​faculty/​staff. Thai for days!

Thai food is one of my favorite cuisines and I was very excited to try out Kiin Thai Eatery. The restaurant itself is decorated very tastefully and the menu looked amazing. However, I don’t think I ordered the right thing because I didn’t enjoy the food nearly as much as I expected.
Food: I ordered the Nham Prik Num Chili Relish Set which looked really cool and seemed like a house specialty. Unfortunately it was just not my type of food. The eggplant and chili mixture was a little too spicy and I don’t really like pork rinds. It just seemed like a really strange dish with various raw vegetables and a boiled egg. I guess you’re supposed to eat it all with the chili relish. I did really enjoy the sausage and the curry was also very good with the sticky rice. However, I usually prefer my curry a bit thicker and it was a little too sweet for my liking. I did enjoy the overall presentation of the dish on a raised platform and the sticky rice came in a cute straw container.
I had high hopes for the restaurant but I think I may have just ordered wrong. I would perhaps try it again in the future.

Kiin Thai Eatery recently opened in the Village and quickly stood out from the sea of Thai restaurants in NYC.
A spin-​off of the NE Thailand Isan-​focused Somtum Der in the East Village, (one of my fav NYC Thai restaurants), Kiin has a few similar dishes, but also has Lanna Northern Thai style dishes.
Pad Thai, available in practically every Thai-​American restaurant, is authentically prepared just like you’d see in Thailand, wrapped in an egg covering.
I thought the Po Pia shrimp and calamari appetizers were ok, but the Isan sausage appetizer is a must try. Sai Oua took me right back to Northeast Thailand where it is a staple. The minced pork sausage is simply eaten with small lime wedges peel and all, peanuts, cilantro, fresh chili pepper, and wrapped in a lettuce leaf. It’s a party in your mouth! Keep water nearby.
All of the dishes we tried were good. The grilled tamarind duck was a bit overdone, but the spicy minced pork basil with black preserved egg was good, and slow cooked pork shoulder with basil and other spices was phenomenal.
Except for the three mosquito bites (so authentic as if in Chiang Rai, Thailand) I got while eating, it was an enjoyable meal with friendly service.

As a self-​professed lover of Thai cuisine, Kiin Thai’s quiet opening in Greenwich Village didn’t escape my radar, especially since it was started by the same owners who oversee Somtum Der, one of my favorite Isan Thai restaurants in the city [1]. Unlike its sibling, which focuses solely on the cuisine of northeast Thailand, Kiin Thai’s reach is much broader; it includes the typical stir-​fried noodle and curry dishes from Central Thailand, but pulls in flavors and ingredients from Northern Thailand. It’s an eclectic, unique menu, and one that will tempt you to order everything listed.
My friend and I were able to practice some self-​restraint, however, and selected three dishes to share for dinner. First to arrive was the Nham Prik Ong Relish Set, a kind of «assemble your adventure» dish which features a curry-​like minced pork chili dip at the center, with various vehicles for dipping — crispy pork rinds, fried Vietnamese sausage, hard-​boiled eggs, and sliced carrots, cucumber, and boiled cabbage leaves — around the plate. The dip is as addictive and full-​bodied as any good curry or stew should be, especially with the addition of ripe tomatoes, and the edge of spice certainly encouraged us to take as many scoops of it as possible.
We defaulted to the Pad Thai, curious as to how the execution here would differ from the countless other versions served at every other Thai restaurant in the city. For one, the rice noodles are wrapped in a thin egg crêpe upon service, a presentation that a Thai friend of mine had once told me was the «authentic» version of the dish. The noodles are chewy, coated in a sauce that has hints of fish sauce and shrimp paste, and the requite bean sprouts, beef (an amendment from the default shrimp), and chives can all be found within as well. For those wishing to sweeten or spice up their noodles, a small tray of sugar, red pepper, and crushed peanuts is served on the side
Finally, the Kua Kling, a dish we’d agreed to order given the two pepper signs listed next to the name. It also is, notably, the only Southern Thailand dish on the menu, and consists of diced pork shoulder stir fried in high eat in a lemongrass-​chili curry paste and kaffir lime leaves. At first glance, it’s not the most attractive dish, but each bite of pork conceals a deceptive amount of flavor — aromatic from the lime leaves, spicy thanks to the generous handful of Thai chilies, and a deep, savory base from the lemongrass curry. It’s not a dish for those with mild palates, but eat it with a scoop of jasmine rice and watch the beads of sweat start to form on your companion’s face by the end of the meal.
Kiin also offers one of the most pleasant environments I’ve yet to find in a Thai restaurant; the color scheme is predominately an off-​hue white, and the high ceilings and minimalist décor is a welcome invitation for guests to linger. It’s an ideal spot for a casual dinner with friends, and certainly, I’d say it’s appropriate for a first or second date — although the latter might be recommended as it’ll give you enough time to establish your partner’s dining adventurousness. ;)
–
[1]

Kiin Thai at the Greenwich Village comes from the same group that brought us the Isan-​loving Somtum Der in the East village.
Kiin Thai offers classic Central and Northern Thai cuisine as well. The place has a spacious dining area and a full bar, with an ambiance that is bright and trendy.
The menu offered colorful pictures for each and every item. We were feeling adventurous that night, and decided to try something we never had before. We started with ‘Nham Prik Ong’ Relish Set, which is minced pork chili dip made of curry and ripe tomatoes. It was served with a set of crispy pork rinds, fried Vietnamese sausage, soft-​boiled eggs, carrot, cucumber, cabbage and coriander. The sweet and sour taste was complemented well with a glass of Côtes du Rhôné.
The ‘Po Tak’ Tom Yum Seafood Soup was new to us as well. It was served in a medium bowl and it can be shared by two or more people. It included tripe, bass, calamari, mussels and shrimp in a spicy Tom Yum soup, tamarind, white beech mushrooms, galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, basil and dried chili. «Po Tak» is a Tom Yum flavored soup but without coconut milk.
We shared a delicious Tamarind Duck Breast, it was grilled and topped with tamarind sauce and fried red onions, served with vegetable garnishes.
Our orders came in a timely fashion. It was such a lovely dinner night, I can’t wait to invite my Thai food loving friends to dine here!