Som Saa

Coming here really did feel like London Serendipity at its best. A randomly met Michelin starred chef we randomly met in a random pop up restaurant decreed that we must investigate.
And investigate we did! The next day with the vitality that only two 30somethings can have for the short ride to Hackney. We meandered through the streets and to the now legendary Climpson Arch popup for their latest endeavour. Thai street food.
I learnt that this is one of the places where new chefs come (remember I’m old and not with it) and Som Saa (under the direction of Andy Oliver and Mark Dobbie) have there about a year with their residency finishing on the 18^th October. The serendipitous result is amazing and they are now about to go for their city venue.
We didn’t have a reservation so we had to wait an hour but snacks and staters were available in the bar area. They did a nice cocktail but the stars were the fermented pork and cornish crabmeat and coconut bites starters. The meat was very soft with the vinegary hint of the fermentation.
The rest of the affair was at shared tables and small (but filling) dishes to share
The aubergine egg salad had beautiful sharp fishy an lemony broth with the combination feeling light and tasty. The deep fried sea bass was an explosion of flavour and the stand out dish with the fish falling off the bone. The goat soup was tasty but with a similar vibe while the venison, mint and star fruit salad was a much calmer affair with rare venison and the spices providing a sweet addition to vinegary fish saucy main dishes.
This was genuinely one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to in London and with their successful kickstarter campaign they will next be serving in central London if you can’t make it by the 18^th.

This climpson arch pop up has been going a while yet I have struggled and struggled to get a table here: they only take one reservation for 6pm for the largest table and otherwise it’s no reservations. We’ve turned up at 7pm on a Thursday to be told we have a 3 hour wait. But at 5:55pm on a Saturday we were seated without too much bother. Maybe the nice weather was keeping everyone in London Fields.
The service was good when we got it but many others had orders taken before us despite us sitting down first and a few times I really did have to wave them over.
It’s communal seating so expect to share but the food is great and we enjoyed all our dishes. It’s all about sharing so expect that bill to rack up pretty quickly.

Asian street food is all the range right now — here in London, in Australia and every other non Asian country. You literally cannot visit a hospitality website or magazine without someone spouting on about a new restaurant opening that week doing some version of Asian Fusion. And that’s where the fun ends — with that word ‘fusion’. Very rarely do you find someone cooking the same way that you would find should you go and visit a particular Asian country. But then sometimes you find a gem of a place under a set of railroad tracks doing the rare dishes you would travel thousands of miles to eat.
Som Saa is exactly that — and you will find them in London Fields. But you will also find a massive queue. Rather than wait in the courtyard with a cocktail or beer for a table I would suggest putting your name down, getting an approximate wait time and head over to London Fields Brewery which is about 45 seconds walk from the restaurant.
London Fields Brewery is a warm space with a relaxed after work crowd and a top selection of beers on tap and from the cask. There’s usually a resident band or musician pumping out some tunes and you’re encouraged to spill out onto the footpath to lap up the sun during the summer months.
What sets these guys apart from the rest of the craft beer crowd is that with most of the beers available — you have the option of drinking them from either the cask of from tap. This is the first time I’ve encountered this option — usually the brewers decide that a particular beer tastes better from one of them and that’s as far as your choice goes — no so here.
Som Saa
When the time calls it’s time to head to Som Saa and make yourself at home. The space is cosy and the room on your table is even smaller. Expect to be bumping elbows with your neighbours if you need to go communal with another group. But all that’s to be expected when you go pop-​up in London. Housed in a rail arch which is home to Climpson & Sons roastery during the day it has a quaint feel even while rammed with punters.
A table of four we decided to see how much of the menu we could chew through and I think we did ourselves proud. The menu features a hit list of lesser known dishes from Northern Thailand that utilises charcoal grills and wood-​fired ovens to give the food a proper smoky flavour. We started with grilled octopus salad with salted duck egg, asian celery and and peanut ‘nam jim’. Flavours that punch you in the face — that’s what I was expecting and boy do they deliver.
My favourite Thai ‘salad’ is most definitely som tam — a green papaya mash up featuring the four S’s of Thai cooking in perfect harmony. I used to have this dish for lunch every single day at BangPop in Melbourne and most recently in the head chef’s new gaff Botherambo.
If the man has to grill then you better let him use it — gai yaang, grilled chicken leg with jaew dipping sauce was the picture of success. A bit tricky to share between four, we would get an extra portion next time. So not complaining here.
The simplicity of neua yang — grilled onglet with laotian ‘jaew bong’ chilli paste really came together perfectly.
A small but pungent bowl of gaeng hung lay — Northern style pork curry with pickled garlic and ginger mad the medicine go down like a treat. This is how a curry should be — a nice thick sauce that you would drink if given the option and perfectly tender pork.
Instagram dish of the night nam dtok pla thort — deep fried seabass with Isaan herbs and roasted rice powder put a smile on our faces plus all those that were watching as it dropped onto the table. This sealed the deal for me that Som Saa and Smoking Goat were two of the best restaurants in London with the addition of both restaurants specialising in my favourite cuisine.
I love that they haven’t shied away from doing proper sticky rice — and unlimited at that. My one tip is that you don’t use utensils when eating the rice. Instead pick the rice from the basket with your hands, roll it in your fingers into a ball and then use it to pick up the food or dab it in the sauce.
Stopping my tourettes and exclaiming that there never has or ever will be a decent Asian dessert, the salted palm sugar ice cream with turmeric grilled banana and sesame did move me but I didn’t feel that it all came together. The rest of the table snaffled it away so I deem they disagree and loved it all.
The wait and the queuing system at Som Saa may be frustrating, the food is anything but. Head early or late, gorge on some of the best Thai food around and leave laughing.
Contact: Som Saa — 374 Helmsley Place, London, E8 3SB. Website. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram.
Trading Hours: Thu — Fri 6pm-​11pm Sat — Sun 11am — 3pm 6pm — 11pm

I had wanted to go to this for a long time and after finding out their residency at Climpson Arches was ending this Autumn and with a no booking policy me and my friend ventured to London Fields on a rainy May day on Thurs.
We got there dead on 6pm on opening. Been to the setting before (burger competition) and liked it so it was a pity we couldn’t sit outside with any sun as they cook all the food outside with the fire and charcoal.
The beer Lao is a classic Thai beer (apparently) so had to get that and some drinking snack to start. That being a Jan Neem. Fermented pork (like tartare) with peanuts and cabbage. Really liked it with my beer.
From the grill the Neua Yang of Beef Onglet and chilli paste, was like a DIY wrap and reminded me of my time in Asia doing that. Like that too.
The Green Papaya Salad was so fresh and vibrant and cut through other dishes nicely.
The star dishes were the two main plates:
The Geng Hung Lay of Pork Belly Curry was fantastic. The Sauce was wonderfully spiced with garlic and ginger and went great with the (unlimited) sticky rice (had two portions) to soak it in.
The Nam Dtok Pla Thort of Deep Fried Seabass was perfectly balanced of salty and sweet, crispy and soft. A must get.
All in all a thumbs thumb all round and wonder where they will go next!

I couldn’t let Som Saa sit there with a two-​star review, so here was my experience.
We showed up with two other food nerd friends for breakfast — sadly, they were doing a limited menu but apologised profusely — service was never anything less than attentive, chatty and friendly throughout our experience. We went for a selection of cocktails and the savoury rice porridge (I forget the name — but it’s a really good congee, basically) which is far better than it sounds.
I’m ethnically Karen, and this was pure comfort food for me. The combination of starchy, salty, umami and herby was fantastic and I could have eaten several more bowls of this (as I do at home). We returned for dinner that evening and proceeded to get very drunk and ordered a lot of delicious dishes from their grill. Even side dishes are prepared with a lot of care and are far more than the sum of their parts.
All of this is unsurprising when you learned the chef trained under David Thompson (Nahm — previously London’s only Michelin-​starred Thai resto, now relocated to Bangkok and a former winner of San Pellegrino + Restaurant magazine’s World 50 Best in Asia) and the FOH manager’s CV includes stints at Russell Norman joints. This reminds me of the Peckham Thai barbecue pop-​up. It’s definitely a trendy place, but not in the Bistrotheque or Novikov mould — it’s far more casual and it’s clear that the team here cares about the customer experience and product.
If you want painful authenticity, go to Heron in Paddington. If you’re looking for pretty food in nice surroundings, there is no shortage of elegant Thai options in town. Leave Som Saa to the people who just care that it’s delicious.

The street on which you will find Som Saa is dark and ominous, the type of industrial gloomy road in which you might expect to get mugged. The sign outside of Som Saa just points the way to ‘Climpson’s Arch’ which seems to be the only indication of civilisation nearby. This is the location for the pop up restaurant Som Saa which does not have an inviting front, nor sufficient heating as it is a make-​shift garage-​turned restaurant. The vibe I get from Som Saa is that it has put a lot of effort into appearing trendy, hip and unique; it’s interior consists of walls plastered with random faded foreign pictures, the furniture and interior design is plain and a little rustic, and even the employees are noticeably young as if this makes the restaurant more fashionable.
Quite surprisingly there are NO non-​alcoholic drinks on their drinks menu but the restaurant does provide tap water in a glass bottle and they refill this when required. There is also not a great deal to choose from on the one-​A4-​page food menu and the drinking snacks and small plates are genuinely very small, such that you could order 2 per person if hungry. There was a special option the day I visited which was Sour fruits with chilli sugar and this was interesting with slices of pomelo, papaya and apple available to dip into chilli-​salt as a unique inticer before the meal started.
The main menu introduces its food as being reflective of Northern Thai food claiming that it is less rich and uses more fresh herbs but from what I had tried, my tastebuds highly disagree. Indeed I did feel the food was less fragranced than at other Thai restaurants but (I would not necessarily class this as a good feature) as instead I tasted an overpowering use of salt and possibly msg. I do not have anything against such ingredients but it masked what should have been the highlight of the food which is the meat. There is indeed a barbecue outside the restaurant where they frame-​grill the chicken, squid and pork which is all well and good but the ‘Jan naem’ grilled fermented pork was too burnt and the ‘pla meuk kamin’ squid whilst cooked enough to be sufficiently edible was flavourless until soaked in its dip which made it taste like the salted dried squid you get in Chinese supermarkets. The ‘gai yang’ chicken leg was by far the best dish available together with it’s lightly spiced dip but even then this was pleasant but not all that original. The next best thing was the ‘nam dtok pla thort’ seabass which was well presented with fish on the bone and upright but was a little too well soaked in a salty sauce base and the meat was not succulent enough to seem entirely fresh. The ‘unlimited sticky rice’ was again presented in a unique way (in bamboo pockets) but was chunky and bland to eat. There was only one choice of dessert (kluey yang ‘ice cream’ nam dan beep) which was described by friends as ‘sickly sweet’ yet as someone with a sweet tooth I did not mind the level of sweetness but in general the so called ‘salted bo. lan palm sugar ice cream’ basically tasted like soft toffee-​caramel and the ‘turmeric grilled banana’ was neither-​here-​nor-​there but seemed more like a decoration than any venture on taste.
The overall experience from atmosphere to food did not feel like authentic Thai and so whilst Som Saa is a tolerable and maybe somewhat quirky place to visit, this is a ‘pop-​up’ to only ‘pop-​in’ if you want to try something a little different but are not too fussed about the quality and flavour of the Thai food.