It’d be easy to write off Sense of Thai St. as a bar that’s all style. The interior isn’t anything like the stripped down strip mall experience of neighborhood Thai restaurants. There’s modern wood paneling, requisite industrial light fixtures and varied wall art of paintings and iron works shipped from Thailand. There’s twice-yearly cocktail pop-ups, a summer one flush with fruity tiki drinks and a winter component with warming, brown booze. The food is not an afterthought: crying tiger, seasoned sliced steak, reverberates with heat; zaab fried chicken wings are sticky and fragrant with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf; and the chicken and shrimp-based salad with banana blossom is bright and crunchy and a textural marvel, especially with the magical fruit bomb of a juicy lychee.
Sense of Thai St.
Thai | $$
20413 Exchange St., Ashburn
