(Photo courtesy of Khao Noodle Shop.)
Khao Noodle Shop joined an exclusive list of top-10 best new restaurants in America, according to a Bon Appetit list released Tuesday.
Owner Donny Sirisavath’s menu, inspired by his mother’s Lao dishes, impressed deputy editor Julie Kramer, who traveled around the country sampling meals at up-and-coming restaurants.
“After one slurp of painstakingly handmade noodles in a savory, complex pork blood broth, the restaurant’s roots came through clearly,” Kramer wrote. “This is the cooking of Laos, the country the chef’s mother fled after its civil war before resettling in Texas in 1977.
“Now, in a strip mall in East Dallas — an area once home to many Southeast Asian refugees in the late ’70s and early ’80s — Sirisavath serves a menu inspired not by books or classes or other restaurants, but by his own singular vision, rooted in family and place. This is a rare thing to find, and I felt lucky just to be there.”
Bon Appetit named Khao Noodle Shop to the top-10 list about a week after it published its list of 50 best new restaurants in America. Neighborhood eatery, Petra and the Beast, was also nominated to that list alongside the noodle shop.
“I’m in disbelief and amazed,” Sirisavath told the Dallas Observer. “I was wishing Petra would be on there, too, but I’m happy. I really wish my mom could be here.”
Khao was runner-up behind No. 1 restaurant Konbi, a Japanese sandwich shop in Los Angeles.
