Let’s pause a moment and give thanks to all the neighborhood Thai restaurants of the ’90s and early aughts that gave rise to the swell of ridiculous (as in awesome) Siamese hotspots now in our midst. In recent years, Tuun and Isan Zaap, with their unabashedly bold and invigorating dishes, blazed a new trail for a string of newcomers spotlighting regional variants and street fare like Talay, Lim Ros, Thai Super Bowl, Budsaba and Lert, just to name a few.
In SoDo, Sabai Thai Street Food presents cookery from Phuket to Isan — Phuket because that’s where Sabai chef-owner Viradee Pissara ran her restaurant, and Isan because that’s where she’s from. She and her son, Alex, a wok maestro with experience cooking at, coincidentally, Lim Ros and Isan Zaap, form the rock-solid foundation of Sabai’s scratch kitchen, from which a tight and tidy list of items are fired. Or not fired, as in the case of the racy papaya salad ($11) with its julienned shreds mortar-and-pestled with tomatoes, long beans, carrots, peanuts and chilies splashed with fish sauce and lime. As perfect as the salad is on its own, it also makes an ideal side bite when indulging in, say, panang ($14) with jasmine rice. That homemade curry paste is fried in a wok with coconut cream until it “splits,” bringing out all those rich scents and flavors. Aromatics and vegetables are then added, followed by meat — soft, velvety slivers of chicken in our case. Not only was the curry “so well incorporated,” as my dining comrade said, but the lemongrass, lemon leaf and Thai basil gave off such an intoxicating fragrance.
We couldn’t help but save some of that papaya to have in between bites of house-made Isan sausages (three for $10). Garlic provided the powerful bite in these porky tubes filled with glass noodles, cilantro, rice and the well-kept secrets of a multigenerational family recipe. The outstandingly alliaceous numbers weren’t enough to quell the vampiric desires we had toward the beef jerky ($12), also house-made and served with a sweet and spicy nam jim jaew. Funnily enough, I got a pain in the neck from hunching over a bowl of veg-filled tom yum soup ($16) with surprisingly sweet and expectedly sour notes. The stock is composed of a chicken-bone base simmered for hours with lemongrass, makrut lime leaf and galangal. Its characteristic sweetness comes not from palm sugar but a combination of several ingredients they’re closely guarding.
“If you like that, you need to try the tom yum noodle soup,” said my accommodating server. Indeed, no other restaurant in the city is making this most signature of Sabai’s slurps. One sip of the singular broth reveals the four S’s of Thai cooking — sweet, sour, salty and spicy. A very specific ratio of pork bone to chicken bone to beef bone forms the stock that simmers for 48 hours with daikon, onions, crispy garlic, peanuts and a proprietary blend of herbs and spices. It’s what made Viradee’s stall in Phuket a culinary destination, and it’ll do the same for Sabai. In that broth is roasted pork, ground pork, bean sprouts, peanuts, garlic, pickled radishes and a choice of either rice or egg noodles (we opted for rice). Oh, and red-hot chilies. There’s always red-hot chilies. But fear not, all you capsaicin-phobes — heat levels can be adjusted to all tastes. For the chicken larb ($14), I went balls-out “Thai hot”; for the fried rice, I tempered it down to “medium” so that I could savor the liberal amount of crab ($17) set atop the glistening kernels.
When co-owner Bill Spradlin, a soft-spoken chap who happens to be Viradee’s husband and Alex’s pop, came by to ask us how everything was, “Great!” was our collective response. “Well, all credit goes to my wife and son,” he proudly half-whispered. As a testament to their kitchen acumen, a takeout order of pad thai ($14) from one lunchtime visit yielded a “Wow, that tastes so fresh!” from my better half, and that was a good 45 minutes after I picked up the order.
“Sabai” is Thai for “relax,” and everything about the place — its cozy quarters, family photos, chill music and, yeah, Bill’s voice, leans into that vibe. I relaxed my mouth onto a beautifully presented serving of mango sticky rice ($12) and damn near fell asleep right afterwards. Word of advice: Get that decadent dessert now. If you didn’t know, mango season is upon us, and those tropical treasures will peak over the next couple of months.
At Sabai, it pays to show your street smarts.
Sabai Thai Street Food, 3333 S. Orange Ave., 689-336-3384, sabaithaistreetfood.com
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This article appears in May 27-June 2, 2026.
