Our critic rates 3 sizzling steak nights in Houston. Here’s how they stack up.<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Papaya]()
![\"Yum]()
<\/p>\n
Papaya salad with salted crab, left, and a glass noodle salad with shrimp, ground pork and squid.<\/p>\n
Bao Ong \/ Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
True to the restaurant\u2019s name, which Mindy said translates loosely to \u201chouse of salad,\u201d nearly every table orders a somtum from a section featuring nearly a dozen variations.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Clockwise from top left: stir fried water spinach, green curry with chicken, squid stir fry special and chicken noodle soup.<\/p>\n
Bao Ong \/ Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
For diners who aren\u2019t 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\u2019ve found to be better than most. The cooks don\u2019t lean too heavily on palm sugar, and the rice noodles keep an al dente bite.<\/p>\n
Thai boat noodles are among the restaurant\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
But if that\u2019s too spicy for you, even at one pepper, I\u2019d order the kao piek sen any day. It\u2019s a classic Lao chicken soup with buoyant noodles made from tapioca and rice flour floating in a thick broth. I immediately thought of\u00a0congee as I picked up the warmth of galangal and the brightness of cilantro and green onions.<\/p>\n
These homey preparations of classic Thai and Lao dishes played a part in Banh Somtum making the Houston Chronicle\u2019s Top 100 list in 2023. When I mentioned this to Mindy, she didn\u2019t appear to know.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh wow, thank you,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
The amount of chiles, while a hallmark of Lao and Thai cooking, isn\u2019t necessarily an indicator of how \u201cauthentic\u201d Banh Somtum is, Mindy added. That tracks with my own experience, since I often hear diners praise a Thai restaurant simply because it isn\u2019t afraid to challenge the Scoville scale.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Banh Somtum, 13420 TX-249, 281-630-1319\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two stars<\/p>\n
Hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, closed Wednesdays, 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Reservations: None<\/p>\n
What to order: For appetizers, Thai chicken wings, Lao beef jerky, crispy chicken skin, Lao sausage and\u00a0nam 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\u2019re more adventurous, try the Thai boat noodles or kao piek sen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Noise level: Quiet to moderate<\/p>\n
Parking: Free parking in strip center<\/p>\n
STAR RATINGS<\/p>\n
Four stars: Superlative; can hold its own on a national stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three stars: Excellent; one of the best restaurants in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two stars: Very good; one of the best restaurants of its kind.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One star: A good restaurant that we recommend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No star: Restaurant cannot be recommended at this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Banh Somtum | \u2605\u2605 | Thai-Lao cuisine | 13420 TX-249 | 281-630-1319 A few minutes into my first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-349678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}