There's something refreshingly unafraid about Khao Bird's arrival in Soho. The restaurant opened in the space of a former adult cinema—a location that carries its own theatrical charge—and positioned itself near Kiln, an established Thai restaurant with considerable reputation. This wasn't a cautious move by chef Luke Larsson and restaurateur Mike Palmer. It was a damned ballsy one, and it paid off immediately. Giles Coren's January 2026 review in The Times declared the restaurant "absolutely brilliant," language he reserves for places that genuinely merit it.
The menu reads as a manifesto for northern Thai barbecue done properly. Shan meatballs arrive with the kind of charred, thrilling rusticity that makes you understand why Coren described the cooking as "so not civilised, so unbearably delicious." The mutton chips with Burmese curry sauce are the kind of dish that makes you question why this hasn't been a fixture on every Thai menu in London—crispy, funky, unapologetic. A char-grilled onglet steak with white curry sauce shows restraint and precision, the kind of plate that reveals itself as the evening unfolds rather than screaming for attention.
What distinguishes Khao Bird from the growing number of Thai restaurants across London is its refusal to soften or adapt. The cooking is assertive. The portions are honest. Even something as apparently straightforward as the Golden Shan Tofu carries genuine conviction. This is not food designed to please everyone. It's food designed to satisfy people who understand what they're eating and why it matters.
The restaurant's viral I Am Broke cocktail has done the publicity work, but the lasting appeal lies in the plates. Larsson and Palmer have taken their experience running Lucky Khao in Brighton and a Borough Market residency and distilled it into something that feels simultaneously confident and still discovering itself. That's the mark of restaurants worth returning to—they know what they're doing, but there's still room for evolution.
Soho needed this. Not another Thai restaurant, precisely, but another restaurant willing to be difficult in service of genuine flavor. The converted cinema location only adds to the sense of occasion. You're not going to Khao Bird to tick a box. You're going because the food is worth the journey, the noise, and the utter lack of compromise.