Which is why Galanga Thai House, which opened in 2015 and which I wrote about shortly after, remains such a pleasure. In those ten years, the restaurant has evolved from a serious and deeply personal expression of Thai cooking into one of the city’s most ambitious dining rooms. Chef Somsri Raksamran — AKA Ana — and her locally-sourced husband Eleazar have since earned mention in the Michelin Guide, moved into a magnificently restored Porfirian mansion, and expanded the menu into territory that feels almost “Royal Thai”: elaborate, ceremonious, visually meticulous and occasionally delightfully excessive.
The core virtues, however, remain intact. Galanga still understands that Thai cuisine depends not on generic “Asian” flavoring but on precision: the perfume of holy basil, the citrusy lift of makrut lime leaf, the bite of galangal, the correct use of lemongrass with its prized pale stalk, the balancing of sweet, sour, salty and chile heat. Many ingredients are still cultivated by the couple themselves on their farm in Hidalgo, allowing the kitchen to avoid the compromises that plague so many international restaurants here.
Classic dishes continue to appear — som tum (green papaya salad that should be eaten fiery hot and will be done so on request), larb (chopped, condimented meat), hand-pounded curries and excellent pad thai — but the menu has become far more expansive and theatrical. There are delicate Thai Royal Dumplings shaped almost like jewelry; foie gras miang kham wrapped in betel leaf with toasted coconut and palm sugar caramel; oysters with ikura and fermented fish sauce; and gaeng kua hoi, a lush yellow curry from Southern Thailand with grilled scallops, salmon roe and noodles. A duck panaeng curry arrives rich with cumin and peanuts, while a massive Phuket-style mud crab is paired with jasmine rice or traditional kanom jeen noodles. Even humble khao soi (the northern noodles) is rendered in an unusually luxurious fashion.
