At Seattle Thai eating places, even the fundamentals are something however, like Kin Len’s river prawn pad Thai.
Seattle’s Thai restaurant scene is hotter than sticky rice freshly unwrapped on the desk, and considerably much less prone to burn your fingers. New openings deliver hyper-specific sub-cuisines to the town as old-school spots cement their legacies; the papaya salads get spicier, the rice salads crispier. Whether or not you choose by the consolation in a bowl of wealthy coconut curry or solely after toasting with a boozy chrysanthemum slushy, this listing covers Seattle’s greatest Thai eating places of all types.
Belltown
A rainbow of beams arch over the bar, plastic baskets in each colour long-established into chandeliers grasp from the lofty ceiling, after which, on the entrance of this shotgun-shaped Belltown restaurant, a pretend market stall serves because the host stand. The message: Prepare for brilliant, comforting road meals favorites from Thailand. The huge menu takes cues from the favored Bangkok marketplace for which it’s named—excellent roasted pork stomach, sausages with severe spicy kick, deep-fried crab truffles, and a carousel of housemade scorching sauces to crank up the warmth. If the sheer variety of dishes overwhelms (there are, delightfully, six papaya salad choices alone), servers can steer you in the best chile-spiked route.
Thai staples, like stewed beef Panang curry, have allowed Bai Tong to flourish right into a restaurant empire.
Numerous
A Thai Airways worker opened Bai Tong close to Sea-Tac in 1989 and created a spot for homesick expats with hospitable servers in conventional silk garb and vivid dishes like aromatic meang kum lettuce wraps, beautiful crispy garlic rooster, and a comforting banana-coconut milk kluay buat chee dessert. Since then, Bai Tong has expanded right into a veritable empire, first transferring to extra destination-worthy digs close to Southcenter, including areas in Redmond and Issaquah, plus takeout areas within the U District and SLU. In 2017 the eating places added an off-the-cuff Pike/Pine sibling with its personal road meals menu, serving tender gems of mussel shrouded in crunchy layers of fried egg, plus a ton of standout pork stomach. The group’s upscale restaurant, Noi, has areas downtown, in Inexperienced Lake, and in Bend, Oregon, and Honolulu.
West Seattle
Low mild, vermilion partitions, and wooden filigrees that delicately evoke historic Siam make this enduring West Seattle favourite one of many loveliest Thai eating places round. However the crispy garlic rooster devotees—you already know, those who order it for takeout thrice per week—don’t want the place to be stunning. They simply want their repair: tender morsels of fried rooster, sautéed in garlic, fired with chiles, and served over crisped basil alongside jasmine rice.
The signature dumplings at E-Jae Pak Mor deserve all of the hype, however so do acquainted dishes like khao soi, beef noodle soup, and khao mun gai.
Chinatown–Worldwide District
The namesake dumplings at this Chinatown–Worldwide District store hardly want any extra hype after TikTok caught onto their silky-soft, gently rippled blue and white rice flour skins, daring pork filling, and herby dipping sauce. However they deserve all of it for the quantity of ability and labor that goes into the specialty hardly ever seen exterior Thailand. The remainder of the menu lives as much as that commonplace—together with the polished model of khao soi. And co-owner Pum Yamamoto’s cheerful helpfulness as she clears tables and delivers meals provides an additional dollop of sunshine in every chew, making certain that the restaurant will reside on properly past its viral fame.
Phinney Ridge
After a decade in Previous Ballard, one of many metropolis’s most distinctive Thai eating places settled right into a extra mellow existence in a transformed Craftsman on Phinney Ridge. “Candy’s probably not what we do right here,” says a server, earlier than handing over a menu with total sections devoted to each grilled skewers and inexperienced papaya salad. Farther down the roster, hunks of pork stomach disintegrate in a restrained coating of five-spice curry, whereas tender cod and rice noodles arrive able to wrap in lettuce leaves. Fu Kun Wu, the adjoining apothecary-style cocktail bar from the Ballard days, now occupies a bit of chamber by the doorway, and a patio shaded with Singha umbrellas and copious bamboo delivers a surprisingly sultry vibe on a busy stretch of Greenwood Ave.
Gao Lhao brings the joy—and meals—of Bangkok’s Chinatown to Inexperienced Lake.
Inexperienced Lake
Completely satisfied hour kicks off with boozy chrysanthemum or Thai tea slushies, scorching plates sizzle to the desk with steak and garlic butter rice, and the electrical ambiance continues all through the night time, becoming for a restaurant impressed by cofounder and chef Saravut Nawasangarun’s childhood visits to Bangkok’s Chinatown. The neon lights and murals of road distributors, the khaki vests the servers put on emblazoned with the restaurant’s title, the music; all of it feels thrilling. But it surely’s the meals that cements it, notably the dishes hardly ever seen round right here: smoky pandan leaf–wrapped rooster with candy soy sauce dip, crisp garlicky wild cod that appear like grownup fishy nuggets however style like wonderful eating, and the shocking Chinese language black olive inexperienced beans.
Ballard
In enterprise since 1987, Thai Siam is an elder statesman of the Seattle restaurant scene. It serves a nostalgic model of Thai-American delicacies: crunchy-sweet mee-krob, basic pad Thai, and impressively spicy soups. Tragedy almost struck in spring 2025, when the lease ran out on Thai Siam’s squat, unremarkable North Ballard constructing, however the neighborhood rallied round proprietor Nancy Bhokayasupatt, and she or he ended up shopping for the house. A becoming decision for a restaurant that has all the time fervently supported its neighborhood in all types of the way, most notably with its annual free Christmas dinners.
Each the meals and the vibes at Kin Len are energetic and colourful.
Fremont
A meandering sequence of elegantly dim areas units the expectation of stylish neighborhood bar, whereas the artistic and exact dishes insinuate that neighborhood may as simply be Music Wat as Fremont. The wide-ranging menu reveals off the total extent of Thai delicacies with dishes like spicy octopus carpaccio, banana blossom fries, and durian tiramisu. The drinks observe swimsuit, as within the Ying Yang Jar, with mezcal-infused espresso, Baileys, and sesame oil.
Ballard
It’s a restaurant candy spot—lantern-lit and good sufficient for informal Saturday nights, cheap sufficient to feed the household with out incurring a punishing invoice. Most significantly, this little eating room on Ballard’s fundamental drag preaches the pungent, spicy gospel of Thailand’s northeast Isan area, utilizing high-quality proteins, like a nam tok meat salad made additional savory with boar collar, or deceptively fiery Thai sausages. Khao soi curry noodle soup: necessary.
Larb’s scorching pot and Northern Thai specialties purpose to please the native Thai neighborhood.
Shoreline
In a world of candy chili sauces boring sufficient to place a Muay Thai struggle crowd to sleep, the one Larb serves alongside fried fish truffles lands a knockout punch, constructing warmth with a gradual burn, popping with peanuts and cucumber crunch. The grilled meat at Larb tastes prefer it belongs at rickety tables in Chiang Mai and the effervescent scorching pot needs to be set out alongside the Mekong in Luang Prabang. The steel cups that maintain the water cool and the partitions of patterned darkish wooden paneling, as if in a conventional Thai home, full the phantasm.
Columbia Metropolis
Among the many strip malls of Martin Luther King Jr. Method, a small Asian grocery retailer takes its title from the capital of Laos and serves dishes from the small nation whose flavors traverse its border with northeastern Thailand. Clients survey photos of papaya salad and noodle soup on the display screen menu overhead earlier than ordering on the counter; most bypass the handful of tables and peruse the few aisles of sundries whereas ready on takeout. Most of the time, that features nam khao, the crispy rice salad made with spicy sausage. Order additional sausage on the facet for the total impact—on second thought, seize a couple of luggage to go.
