Kinnaree is one of Lark Street’s newest restaurants, specializing in Thai & Korean fare. It’s in the same space as A Taste of Greece used to be (193 Lark St, Albany, NY), and I think they’ve changed the space nicely. Warmer tones, different tables and chairs. They’ve still kept the wrap around wall seating. Overall, it’s simple, but nice.

Any way, after getting a sneak peek of the menu on Steve’s Tablehopping blog, I was pretty excited to check it out. I’m usually not a fan of a lot of Thai food in the area because there’s too much sweet going on in the flavors, but Steve’s comments & the recs from other commenters had my hopes set high. I wasn’t disappointed.

There was so much menu to order from, so The Profussor and his Fussy little Children joined the husbear & me to try a wider amount than we’d normally be able to. First up were fried tofu. $4.95.

Fluffy pillows of fried tofu. Nom. Not greasy at all. There was a sweet & sour kind of sauce with crushed peanuts on the left, and our server also brought out some kind of spicy chili powder for the guys (heat hounds). Overall, good flavors, good portion for the price.

Crab salad. $7.95. I am a sucker for soft shell crab and when I saw it on the menu the night before, I had to have it. It was moist, succulent, and deliciously crabby. Not at all greasy. A pretty large soft shell crab, too. I was quite happy with this salad, especially for $7.95. Very good price.

Som Tum (green papaya salad, $6.95). A softball sized (or perhaps a bit larger) portion of green papaya salad with green beans and peanuts in it. Good amount of heat, and the sweet/tart/hot flavors were well balanced. I liked it, although the center of my tongue went numb into my first spoonful. I left it to the heat hounds.

Tteokbokki ($12) is a Korean dish, made of sliced rice cakes and beef with a spicy chili sauce. This wasn’t as spicy as the papaya salad, and I quite enjoyed the flavors. I’ve never had tteok before, but have heard wonderful things about it. I once tried cooking it myself from dried tteok cakes, but didn’t know you had to soak them for a day before hand, so… my efforts did not turn out well.

Any way, these rice cake tteok things are super chewy! Like the first few chews of gum. Lots of resistance. Densely thick rice cakes. An added bonus was that this tteokbokki came with some ban chan! Sweetly soaked potatoes, kim chi, sweet black beans, and bean sprouts. Nice surprise.

Rad Nah ($6.95) was a tasty dish as well. Made of rice noodles, Thai broccoli (tasted like gai lan to me) and a choice of meat, it was quite a tasty dish. It was a cornstarch based gravy, but not gloppy. Tons of savory flavor. We chose more of that tasty tofu as the ‘meat’ for the dish. You can also add chicken for no extra charge, but if you want pork, beef, shrimp, or other seafood it’s an additional charge.

I loved the noodles! The rice noodles had a TON of delicious char to them from the pan. When you see rice noodles that have brown or black on them, THAT IS A GOOD SIGN! It says “WELCOME TO DELICIOUSTOWN!”

Sorry. Rice noodles are one of my favorite starches when they are prepared well, and they were so well prepared here. I get so excited when they come out all seared and delicious like this. They were kind of in a clump underneath the tofu and broccoli, not really long individual ribbons. But they were So. Good.

We finished off with dessert. Some ice cream for the kiddos, and a dessert roti for the adults. $3 for both desserts. Kinnaree was even nice enough to split the ice cream into two bowls for each child.

The dessert roti was nice. Kind of small. Like a very small crepe. But it certainly gave me new and fattily dangerous ideas of how to eat my roti. Rolled up with jam and drizzled with condensed milk. And here I’ve just been eating it plain. Oh dear.

Kinnaree charges for tea. About $2. It’s weird for me to go to Asian places that charge for tea, but I guess times are a-changing. I’m used to it being for free. But they have a pretty wide selection at Kinnaree, and Albany John had a very gingery one he was happy with.

We ended up getting out of Kinnaree for about $52 (before tip). Not too shabby! Obvs it’ll cost more for dinner, but lunch prices are quite nice. hee hee. Get the crab salad. Seriously.

Then we meandered over to the new coffee shop on Lark, Caffe Vero Coffee Roasters. Daniel B. got something with a heart on it.

Albany John got something I’ve never heard of before. And now I forget it’s name. But it’s the one you read and you’re like “Woah, what the heck is that?!”. It was good, too. Half-and-half, some espresso, some cocoa. It was nicely bitter without being acidic and had just a touch of sweetness. Albany John isn’t much of a sweet tooth and really enjoyed it.

The wee one got a hot chocolate and oh my gosh, I’ve never seen a baby toddler house a hot cocoa like that before. It bodes well for her future eating career.