When Everything Is in Flux, Thai Diner Stays Constant

The restaurant simultaneously can serve as the perfect setting for a work-related breakfast meeting that’s finally made it out of an email thread or as host to a low-stakes first meal with a potential new friend you’ve only ever talked to via DMs. There’s rum punch by the pitcher for a group night out and pineapple chiffon cake that looks like an open-mouthed monster in case conversation temporarily runs stale.

While New York City is full of what I think of as “situationally ideal” restaurants (i.e., cocktail bars with drinks that mimic nostalgic dishes, handroll counters, and restaurants where a specific burger has more tags on Instagram than you ever will), Thai Diner made me realize that versatility is, without a doubt, my personal white whale of restaurants. And it’s been that way from day one.

My first-ever visit was less than a month after it debuted and just five days before it would, per guidance from the Centers for Disease Control, close its doors to diners to cap the spread of COVID-19. I’d met two other junior editors from the food magazine we worked at for a breakfast and research date. After eating at so many sad beige dining rooms with open kitchens and austere mid-century modern furniture, getting smacked in the face with the restaurant’s maximalism, from the trapezoidal bar lined with backlit glass bricks to the woven bamboo ceiling and plump paper lanterns in purple, red, yellow, green, felt like a shot of pure adrenaline.

That morning, we’d huddled into a booth to chat over a spread of Thai tea babka French toast served with a tiny (but indulgent) pitcher of condensed milk butter, egg sandwiches with pork sausage wrapped in roti, crumb cake, and a communal pandan coconut shake. We had our phones on the table to take photos of our spoils and keep an eye on our inboxes, where updates about the virus from the magazine’s parent company were trickling in at a gradually more frantic pace.

Our server had just placed a deceptively cheerful coconut yogurt parfait bejeweled with diced pineapple and dragon fruit on our table when we received a calendar invitation for an all-hands meeting in the next hour. If you’ve ever worked in legacy media, you know that a last-minute all-hands meeting precedes: (a) layoffs or (b) a major editorial shift like pivoting to video, but then most certainly, layoffs. It typically does not mean “the outbreak of a global pandemic that will change the course of history as we know it,” but as the next few months would show us, there’s a first time for everything.

We quickly settled the bill and power-walked the 30 blocks down to our office to hear about how we’d work from home for the next two or so weeks. I don’t have many photos on my phone from March, April, or May of that year, but I do have a bright string of shots from that booth at Thai Diner, which unknowingly had played host to the last supper the three of us shared before everything would, without exaggeration, change forever. Soon, restaurants would erect outdoor dining structures overnight, our parent company would sell the magazine we worked at, people would wear hazmat suits to grocery shop, and overnight, living in the largest city in America would feel lonely at “best” and apocalyptic at worst.

With the usual superficial markers of time — work dinners, birthday parties, weddings — absent, watching the evolution of Thai Diner’s pandemic-compliant dining setups became a surprisingly good way to track the months.

First, there were a few tents and tables alongside Mott Street, plus a patio that ran along the restaurant’s facade on Kenmare Street. As the weather cooled down, a cozy greenhouse with a checkered floor, woven wooden chairs, potted plants, and, most importantly, heaters, replaced the tents. Living outside of the restaurant’s delivery radius meant I regularly made use of these options to enjoy a piping hot plate of curried khao soi noodles or a pile of papaya salad with thin slices of steak and peanuts.

Today, it’s typically where I take friends visiting from out of town for a memorable meal. That’s not to say there isn’t a wait for a table, because there often is (but rarely on weekday mornings, which is my preferred time to visit). But during busier stretches, the staff quotes times are — in the context of the surrounding neighborhood’s ample shops, cafés, benches, and distractions — manageable. Once you’re seated, the service is speedy without feeling pushy, portions are generous, and prices are more than reasonable.

Having stepped into a different season of my own career — in fact, all three of us from that booth have since moved on from the magazine, though we still meet for meals — I’d like to think that I’ve learned a thing or two from the restaurant’s remarkable flexibility and resilience, and applied it to my work, friendships, and occasionally less-than-generous inner monologue. Like getting to the bottom of a mountain of their disco fries, which are served slathered in massaman curry, pickled onions, and coconut cream, that versatility is no small feat — but it’s achievable if I’m not being rushed out the door, which I know I won’t be.

Thai Diner is open daily for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, starting at 8:30 a.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. on weekends.

P.S. Thai Diner recently opened their newest counter-service spot, Mommy Pai’s, just up the block on Mott Street, where they serve everything from chicken fingers and waffle fries to fried chicken sandwiches and Thai tea condensed milk soft-serve ice cream. It’s walk-ins only.

Oset Babür-Winter is a writer and editor based on the Upper East Side. Follow her on Instagram.  Follow Resy, too.