There’s a bamboo fish trap hanging from the ceiling above the register at Andy’s Thai Kitchen. It is cylindrical, about the length and diameter of a human arm, with its opening aimed toward the door to entice potential customers as if they’re hapless fish. But if you take this good luck charm for its full figurative purpose and imagine yourself a fish in chef-owner Andy Aroonrasameruang’s trap, it means you won’t be able to turn and swim away before he excises your air bladder, chops it into pieces, and deep-fries them so they puff like Cheetos.
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Fish maw salad was an early favorite among those who embraced Aroonrasameruang’s explosively flavorful cooking at Wrigleyville’s TAC Quick. There’s something about crispy fish guts tossed with shrimp, cashews, cilantro, and mint in a sweet-hot dressing that pushes all the buttons for a certain species of foodlum—the brilliant, piercing, contrasting flavors of Thai food applied to an intimidating animal part transformed by the fryer into something no more threatening than a pork rind. It’s an offal-based dish that goes down easy, but comes with bragging rights for those who keep score.
In the case of the ong choy, it’s an appealing development that Aroonrasameruang has imported, the batter never overwhelming the vegetable. But when applied to familiar standards such as papaya salad, for which he batters and deep-fries the shredded unripe fruit until it has the same texture and consistency as a funnel cake, it’s just a goofy, gimmicky riff.
ATK also features a number of specialties expressing the Chinese influence on Thai food, and sweetness is evident in those as well. Take a pair of red-braised pork dishes: tofu and pork belly with star anise, and pork hock with Chinese broccoli—though the red, tomato-based soup yen ta fo, brimming with fishy bits and blocks of congealed pork blood, pushes this sweetness to the limit, its broth staining slippery ribbons of rice noodles a freakish candy-colored pink.
946 W. Wellington 773-549-7821
