When Malai Kitchen opened in West Village in January 2011, the landlord pulled Braden and Yasmin Wages aside and told them he didn’t think the concept had legs. Thai and Vietnamese food in a full-service room — real cocktails, a wine list, actual service — wasn’t something Dallas had done before at this level. Opening night was dead. The two restaurants very close had lines. Malai sent staff over with drink coupons to poach customers from the wait. Fifteen years later, those restaurants are gone. Malai has four locations, its own brewery, and the landlord still comes in for dinner.
The food is why. Start with the Burmese Tea Leaf Salad — fermented green tea dressing over napa cabbage, bibb lettuce, tomatoes, cilantro, dried shrimp, pureed tea leaves, ginger, and garlic, with multiple types of Burmese nuts and crispy carrots for texture. It’s one of the more unusual salads in Dallas and one of the best. The Green Papaya Salad is the other one worth ordering first — muddled papaya, chilies, peanuts, candied bacon, shredded carrots, tomato, green beans, bell pepper, mint, cilantro, and Thai basil in a red boat tamarind vinaigrette. It has real heat if you don’t dial it down.
For starters, the Vietnamese Meatballs — bun cha style, chargrilled pork patties with bibb lettuce, fresh herbs, and nuoc mam — are as good as anything on the menu. The Ahi Tuna Spring Rolls with lightly seared sushi-grade tuna, rice noodles, mint, cilantro, and pickled bean sprouts in fresh rice paper are what regulars order without looking at the menu. The Pei Mussels in a lemongrass and sauvignon blanc coconut broth with grilled banh mi bread to drag through it are the thing you’ll be thinking about the next day.
The noodle dishes are where Malai separates itself from most of the competition. The Drunken Noodles — wok-seared flat jasmine rice noodles with beef tenderloin, Thai basil, tomatoes, onion, bell peppers, and Thai chilies in spicy soy — are made with flat noodles that Malai now produces in house daily, shipped fresh to all four locations from their own equipment sourced in Vietnam. It took them the better part of a year to get the texture right, importing the rice flour from Vietnam to match what they’d been eating on research trips. The difference is real. The Pad Thai uses the same house noodles, seared with shrimp, farm-fresh egg, and local tofu in tamarind sauce with crushed peanuts, and the Stir-Fried Glass Noodles with chicken, cherry tomatoes, and bean sprouts in a light garlic sauce is the quieter choice that earns its own loyal following.
For larger plates, the Slow-Braised Lamb Shank in peanut-tamarind massaman curry with jasmine rice, soft-boiled egg, Thai eggplant, potato, and carrots is the winter dish that people wait for. The Whole Wok-Fried Branzino is the showpiece — order it when you want the table to notice. The Peanut-Encrusted Trout with lemon-tomato coconut sauce and green curry rice is the sleeper that the regulars know about and first-timers walk past.
The curry paste, the coconut milk, the sriracha — all made in house, every day. Braden and Yasmin go back to Southeast Asia every year to recalibrate. Every employee who’s been with the company three years gets a fully paid trip to Bangkok, Saigon, or Hanoi. It shows in the food in ways that are hard to articulate but easy to taste.
The bar program deserves its own mention. Malai brews six beers in house, starting with the Bia Hoi — a Vietnamese rice lager they fell in love with in Hanoi, couldn’t find anywhere in the US, and decided to make themselves. The ThaiPA is brewed with lemongrass, ginger, galangal, turmeric, and kaffir lime, which sounds like a curry ingredient list because it is. It works better with the food than almost any beer you could bring in from outside.
Malai Kitchen has four locations: West Village at 3699 McKinney Avenue in Dallas, Southlake at 1161 E. Southlake Boulevard, Fort Worth at The Shops at Clearfork, and Preston Center at 6130 Luther Lane. Open daily for lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch. Reservations at malaikitchen.com.
