Ugly Baby early on.
Photo: Liz Clayman
A meal on the Carroll Gardens restaurant Ugly Baby is atomic, particularly when the duck salad or kua kling are on the desk. Opened in late 2017 by the chef Sirichai Sreparplarn, the vacation spot for blast-your-face-off Thai meals stood out in a neighborhood largely recognized for New American brunches and Italian American time warps. Yet Ugly Baby shortly turned considered Brooklyn’s, if not the entire metropolis’s, greatest Thai restaurant, a spot the place, New York as soon as wrote, “all the things appears like a pure manifestation of its chef-owner’s style and persona.” But earlier than the top of this month, the house owners will manifest the top of Ugly Baby: Via social media, they introduced that they’re shutting it down for good.
“We’re closing as a result of chef Sirichai is simply actually drained and desires an extended, lengthy break,” one of many enterprise’s companions writes. “While we’ll miss the restaurant and all the good issues that include it, the upside is that this may give chef Sirichai the possibility to work on a cookbook, which he’s lengthy been eager to do.”
Born in Bangkok, Sreparplarn moved to New York in his late 20s to check journalism. He labored at his aunt’s Thai restaurant within the East Village, and the curry pastes got here calling. In the mid-2010s, he established himself with Kanlaya Supachana as one of many conspirators behind Red Hook’s thrilling Chiang Mai and Kao Soy. At the latter, he advised the New York Times, their aim was to reveal New Yorkers to “the actual meals from the north” of Thailand. Those eating places acquired acclaim, however neither lasted. On Smith Street, Sreparplarn went solo, and his profession took off. Bon Appétit ranked Ugly Baby No. 3 on its record of the nation’s “Best New Restaurants,” then-Times critic Pete Wells rhapsodized concerning the fried coconut muffins referred to as tue ka ko, and right here at New York we praised a deep-fried entire sea bream that was so compulsively edible it made “the evil food-science technicians” come throughout “like amateurs.” Most importantly, it — together with a number of different spots — helped expose a era of Brooklyn white guys to the joys of extremely spicy meals and allowed different operators to faucet into the beforehand nonexistent market.
As Tammie Teclemariam wrote a number of months in the past, “Excellent Thai eating places — spots that promote regionally impressed menus filtered by means of particular person cooks’ experiences and sensibilities — have gotten the norm” in New York. This new norm was established by a wave of Thai eating places that, in the course of the 2010s, introduced the delicacies to new areas of town, and included Sreparplarn’s companies. Before, Thai meals outdoors Queens largely meant gloopy inexperienced curries, and should you needed high quality papaya salad, you needed to head to Sunnyside’s SriPraPhai (est. 1990) or Elmhurst’s Thaitown. But Isaan mania started to unfold round Manhattan a decade and a half in the past by means of locations like Somtum Der in addition to eating places opened by Ratchanee Sumpatboon of Elmhurst’s Chao Thai and Astoria’s Podam. These included Larb Ubol, which spawned the mini-chain Lan Larb, and the East Village location of Zabb Elee, which crowds mobbed proper after a J. Kenji López-Alt overview. In 2012, Andy Ricker opened a department of his Portland restaurant Pok Pok Ny within the “Columbia Street Waterfront District.” Ann Redding and Matt Danzer opened Uncle Boon’s the next yr, and it stayed mobbed till it closed in the course of the pandemic. Thai Diner, Uncle Boon’s non secular successor, continues to be one of many metropolis’s hottest spots.
More not too long ago, Zaab Zaab has grow to be the newest Thaitown success story and is on an enlargement tear throughout downtown Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Flushing. There are scene-y successors to Uncle Boon’s like Bangkok Supper Club, and its predecessor Fish Cheeks, in addition to a handful extra of Brooklyn spots like Sukh.
Ugly Baby isn’t a sufferer of its personal success; its recognition hasn’t waned as newer choices have proliferated. In truth, it appears to be as buzzing as ever. In 2022, the restaurant stopped taking reservations in an effort to, the reason went, serve extra individuals. Last yr, Zach Schiffman discovered it was the uncommon “unimaginable desk” restaurant that was really as busy because it claimed. The closing information has, after all, introduced crowds who don’t wish to spring for tickets to Bangkok: On Monday, Eater NY’s Emma Orlow reported the restaurant was quoting “two-hour waits” over the weekend. It’s good to exit on high.
