Banh Somtum | ★★ | Thai-Lao cuisine | 13420 TX-249 | 281-630-1319
A few minutes into my first visit at Banh Somtum, a small Thai-Lao restaurant in the far northwest side, I grabbed extra napkins to dab the beads of sweat about to roll down my forehead.
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My dining companions and I took sips of water in between bites of green papaya shreds tumbling in a dark, briny dressing laced with fermented fish. We ordered the dish at two or three peppers out of a possible five, but we felt tested. Even the nam kaow — kernels of crispy red curry rice that crackle with bits of sour pork, peanuts and herbs — had us fighting over the last fronds of cooling lettuce.
It was difficult to know whether the sweat came from the capsaicin in the chile peppers jolting our taste buds or from the restaurant’s broken air conditioning. I overheard a customer seated nearby joke to her friend that they should pretend they were eating outdoors in Southeast Asia in the middle of summer. It was, in fact, just after the Fourth of July.
But heat isn’t the only reason to come to Banh Somtum. It’s just one element of nearly every dish here, where a welcome balance of flavors and textures recalls the best of Southeast Asian cooking. Few Thai restaurants in Houston devote equal attention to Lao cuisine like this decade-old spot tucked into a strip center.
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Banh Somtum is a 10-year-old Thai-Lao restaurant in Spring.
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The dining room at Banh Somtum.
Bao Ong / Houston Chronicle
The dining room at Banh Somtum.
Bao Ong / Houston Chronicle
The dining room at Banh Somtum.
Bao Ong / Houston Chronicle
The brightly lit room glows against Jolly Rancher-green walls. Four white fans oscillate constantly — luckily, the air conditioning worked on my other three visits — in a dining room with barely enough space for two dozen people.
A cross-section of customers gathers at Banh Somtum, from a couple who just came from Mass and say grace over a shared bowl of stir-fried noodles to a group of vegans, whom the restaurant will accommodate with enough notice.
I wanted to join the tables taking advantage of the BYOB policy. One evening, a group of men brought two coolers filled with what appeared to be an endless supply of Coronas. Across the room, a family anchored their table with two bottles of Hennessy.
Their tables filled with snacks made for drinking: Lao beef jerky, sweeter than what you’d pick up at a gas station but finishing with a touch of heat, arrived with a glossy sheen dotted with sesame seeds. The Lao sausages, made in-house, were cut into fat coins, their aroma of lemongrass, galangal — a cousin of ginger — and shallots enticing you to tame each bite with sticky rice. Both dishes came with a savory condiment, thick as salsa, made from roasted tomatoes blitzed with fish sauce, sugar and a healthy dose of Thai bird’s eye chiles.
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The showstopper among the appetizers was the crispy chicken skin. The bite-sized chips had a mesmerizing golden hue. They weren’t as delicate as chicharrons that dissolve like cotton candy in one bite. Instead, each salty shard landed with a crunch loud enough, it seemed, for the neighbors to hear.
Crispy chicken skin at Banh Somtum.
Bao Ong / Houston Chronicle
Lao beef jerky, left, and Lao sausage is served with sticky rice.
Bao Ong / Houston Chronicle
This is the scene Mindy and Alex Nguyen, the married couple behind Banh Somtum, love to see unfold in their restaurant, whether at lunch or dinner.
Mindy’s family is Lao and emigrated from Thailand to the United States in the 1980s. They eventually settled in Amarillo, where members of her extended family ran several restaurants. After Mindy moved to the Houston area, where Alex grew up, she realized there were few places dedicated to Lao cuisine. She opened Banh Somtum so customers — whether truck drivers passing through town or college students craving a taste of home — could find the dishes she missed, too.
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“We are not fancy or trying to be something we’re not,” Mindy told me by phone. “This is a restaurant for Lao cooking that’s comforting to many people.”
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Papaya salad with salted crab, left, and a glass noodle salad with shrimp, ground pork and squid.
Bao Ong / Houston Chronicle
True to the restaurant’s name, which Mindy said translates loosely to “house of salad,” nearly every table orders a somtum from a section featuring nearly a dozen variations.
Guests can order the salad Thai style, seasoned with fish sauce, or Lao style, a funkier version dressed with padeak, a fermented fish sauce that coats every strand of papaya. Dried shrimp, long beans, tomatoes and peanuts round out the mix.
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The salted crab papaya salad, while stingy on the crustacean, still delivered the briny punch of seafood balanced by enough lime juice to make you pucker after each bite. If that sounds too adventurous, opt for the yum woon sen, a tangle of pleasantly chewy glass noodles tossed with ground pork, whole shrimp and squid.
Clockwise from top left: stir fried water spinach, green curry with chicken, squid stir fry special and chicken noodle soup.
Bao Ong / Houston Chronicle
For diners who aren’t ready for the in-your-face funk of padeak, Banh Somtum also serves crowd-pleasers like curries and noodle dishes, including pad Thai and pad see ew, that I’ve found to be better than most. The cooks don’t lean too heavily on palm sugar, and the rice noodles keep an al dente bite.
Thai boat noodles are among the restaurant’s most popular dishes. They can be ordered with a light broth or a darker version enriched with beef blood. I described the soup to a friend as a spicier, meatier riff on Vietnamese pho. The bowl arrives with pieces of tripe and house-made beef meatballs bobbing in the broth.
But if that’s too spicy for you, even at one pepper, I’d order the kao piek sen any day. It’s a classic Lao chicken soup with buoyant noodles made from tapioca and rice flour floating in a thick broth. I immediately thought of congee as I picked up the warmth of galangal and the brightness of cilantro and green onions.
These homey preparations of classic Thai and Lao dishes played a part in Banh Somtum making the Houston Chronicle’s Top 100 list in 2023. When I mentioned this to Mindy, she didn’t appear to know.
“Oh wow, thank you,” she said, explaining that she and her husband are stretched thin running the restaurant. They recently announced that Banh Somtum will close at 4 p.m. on Mondays so they can prepare the sausages and other labor-intensive dishes, including the level-five spice blend made with 20 peppers.
The amount of chiles, while a hallmark of Lao and Thai cooking, isn’t necessarily an indicator of how “authentic” Banh Somtum is, Mindy added. That tracks with my own experience, since I often hear diners praise a Thai restaurant simply because it isn’t afraid to challenge the Scoville scale.
But papaya salads, noodle soups and entrees such as stir-fried water spinach and squid special show a wider range: sweet, sour, smoky, bitter and brightly acidic. Spicy or not, Banh Somtum makes you want to come back for one more bite.
Banh Somtum, 13420 TX-249, 281-630-1319
Two stars
Hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, closed Wednesdays, 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays
Prices: $6-$15 appetizers, $11-$19 salads, $14-$15 stir-fried noodles, $14-$17 soups and noodles soups, $14 fried rice, $14 curries, $12-$22 specials
Reservations: None
What to order: For appetizers, Thai chicken wings, Lao beef jerky, crispy chicken skin, Lao sausage and nam kaow. Papaya salads are a must-order, including Lao-style papaya salad and yum woon sen. The stir-fried noodles and curries are well executed, but if you’re more adventurous, try the Thai boat noodles or kao piek sen.
Noise level: Quiet to moderate
Parking: Free parking in strip center
STAR RATINGS
Four stars: Superlative; can hold its own on a national stage.
Three stars: Excellent; one of the best restaurants in the city.
Two stars: Very good; one of the best restaurants of its kind.
One star: A good restaurant that we recommend.
No star: Restaurant cannot be recommended at this time.