Café Isan: Authentic Thai food in Dubai
This award-winning gem offers delicious fresh streetfood at great prices
Nestled between the skyscrapers of Jumeraih Lake Towers is the cozy Café Isan, which provides authentic Thai food and vibes. And we mean authentic: From the design of the outdoor terrace to the Thai music, the cutlery and the posters inside, eating at Isan is the closest thing to genuine Thai street food that we’ve experienced in Dubai.
The café takes its name from
Isan, the northeastern region in Thailand. The head chef comes from that same region, and imports some of the eatery’s ingredients from there to ensure an authentic Thai taste.
Two of Thai cuisine’s defining ingredients are lemongrass and coconut, so we opened our meal with an order of iced lemongrass tea and a fresh coconut drink. The iced tea was refreshing and light, with the characteristic earthy flavor of lemongrass. The coconut was also revitalizing, but with a sweeter flavor, of course.
There’s a wide choice of starters, and all the ones we ordered tasted great. The dim sum were full of flavor, with hints of garlic and lemongrass. The coconut shrimp were particularly interesting, with the coconut flakes adding a crunchy, sweet counterbalance to the fleshy shrimp.
One of the highlights of the starters was definitely the Pik
Gai chicken wings — their exceptionally crispy skin and succulent juicy meat provided exactly what one would want in such a dish. Along with the grilled chicken satay in peanut sauce, these flavors really transported us to Thailand.
We also opted for two salads. The papaya salad — Tom Sum — is one of the signature dishes of Thai cuisine, and this one was prepared to perfection with ultrafresh ingredients. The papaya was crunchy, the tomatoes were soft and the dressing was sour and spicy — all topped with the salty crunch of peanuts.
The Laab Gai (minced chicken salad) was also excellent, with succulent chicken and a nice crispy texture added by the toasted rice powder, Khao Khua. However, if you don’t enjoy warm salads then this dish is not for you. For our mains, we selected two of Café Isan’s curries. First, the northern Thai dish called Khao
Soi —perfect for those who also enjoy Indian cuisine with its pronounced curry flavor. There are hints of coconut enveloped in a creamy, slightly spicy sauce. The crispy wontons with the tender chicken added an interesting depth to the dish.
We would also highly recommend the Panang (red) curry with prawns. Like the Khao Soi it has a rich creamy taste, but the coconut flavor is more pronounced than the curry in this dish, which also makes it slightly sweeter.
If you had to order one dish and one dish only from Isan, you should definitely go for the mango sticky rice, another Thai staple. Isan’s version of this dessert even beat the ones we have eaten in Thailand. The rice was cooked just right, engulfed in a sweet and creamy coconut milk, topped with fresh mango and toasted sesame seeds. Delicious.
When you take into account the low prices you pay for its stellar food — particularly with some of the combos it offers, it is no surprise that Café Isan received Time Out’s Best Thai Restaurant award for 2020. Its food truly tastes like the best Thai street food and the ambience only adds to the experience.