Bangkok’s most innovative Thai restaurants

Soma calls itself a modern Thai social kitchen, and ‘social’ is more than a tagline. Designed with regulars in mind, the menu changes with the seasons and with the dishes guests ask to see again. Its  three chefs – Chalee Kader of Wana Yook, Num Weerawat of Samuay & Sons and head chef Pak Yamoo – create a conversation between generations. Pak’s sour orange curry began with his grandmother’s recipe; here, barramundi is oil-poached rather than simmered in broth, then paired with salmon roe and a crown of crisp vegetables. Beef brisket spends 48 hours being brined, cooked sous vide and smoked over coconut husks before it reaches the fryer. A quieter dish of crisp lotus root, wok-fired with crispy pork belly in fermented bean curd sauce, proves that restraint can be a technique in itself. This isn’t fusion for fusion’s sake, but a kitchen quietly rewriting its family tree one plate at a time.

Soma, Siam Pathumwan House, 414 Soi Kasem San 1, Wang Mai, Pathum Wan, Bangkok.

One of our ‘Greatest of All Time’ picks – and, conveniently, a nod to the owner’s Chinese zodiac year – GOAT serves what it calls offbeat Thai-Chinese cuisine. Chef Tan-Parkorn Kosiyapong names each dish after the Thai province where its ingredients originated, so the tasting menu unfolds less like a set list than a road trip: Khao Yai, Chiang Rai, Saraburi. Everything is sourced within Thailand, ensuring the ‘offbeat’ never comes at the expense of the ‘Thai’. Fermentation runs through the menu and happens as visibly as the cooking itself, in an open kitchen beneath a Sino-Portuguese-style ceiling on Ekamai 10. 

GOAT, 12 Soi Ekkamai 10 Yaek 2, Khlong Tan Nuea, Watthana, Bangkok.

Beyond Bangkok’s edge in Pak Kret, AKKEE cooks as though the past few decades of kitchen technology never happened. There are no electrical appliances; everything is cooked over fire using recipes from chef Ou Sittikorn Chantop’s private collection of antique Thai cookbooks – manuscripts he has spent years tracking down and reviving. The approach has earned AKKEE a Michelin star, but its insect programme is what tends to get people talking. Farmed rather than foraged dung beetles are treated as a serious ingredient, not a stunt, as part of a wider effort to support Thailand’s insect farmers. 

AKKEE, 42/99 Moo 7, Pak Kret Bypass Road, Bang Talat, Pak Kret, Nonthaburi.

At Potong, the building is as integral to the story as the food. The restaurant occupies a 120-year-old former Chinese pharmacy in Chinatown, complete with apothecary drawers, where chef Pam Soontornyanakij’s family once made herbal medicine under the name ‘Bao Kun Yi Mu Yao’. Potong translates roughly as ‘simple’ – a cheeky choice for a tasting menu that reads more like a family scrapbook, with courses named new life, preserving, generations, respect and memories. The pad thai course, generations, won Black Pearl’s Dish of the Year 2025 for its tribute to the dish’s wartime history; it pairs wild-caught prawns from Nakhon Si Thammarat with a reimagined hoi tod. From June to November, respect features roe from young tidal mud crabs from Ranong at their brief seasonal peak. The course named potong centres on duck aged for 14 days, then hung and dried before a precise 13-minute roast. Even dessert isn’t the end: the final course, walls, invites diners to read the building itself – a former pharmacy that has been in the chef’s family since 1910. This is Thai-Chinese fine dining that treats architecture and family lineage as ingredients in their own right. It has earned chef Pam recognition as Asia’s Best Female Chef, while the restaurant holds a Michelin star.

Potong, 422 Vanich 1 Rd, Samphanthawong, Bangkok.

Khaan’s premise is an act of translation: bringing Thai street food to the fine-dining table without stripping away what made it street food in the first place. Chef Aom Sujira Pongmorn – the first recipient of Michelin’s Young Chef Award – has built a zero-waste tasting menu around regional Thai ingredients sourced from across the country, with biodynamic wine or tea pairings. Grilled rice paddy crab from Singburi farmers,served with sticky rice, directly references the way the dish is eaten on the streets of central Thailand. The restaurant’s name means both ‘tiger’ and ‘to proclaim’ in Thai, which feels apt: this is Thai cuisine with something to say, served in a two-storey house on a quiet, tree-lined soi that feels far removed from the traffic outside.

Khaan, 14/3 Soi Somkid, Lumphini, Pathum Wan, Bangkok.