Nihon, Manora Thai, Nihon

thursday night, another birthday dinner! yes, our girl wanted to go to Manora Thai restaurant in the SOMA. we've been having some gorgeous weather lately so i suggested we leave work early for some cool drinks. Nihon was a block from Manora so that was our first stop. it's a loft space with industrial decor, eclectic crowd and the drinks are good here. Nihon also offers modern japanese/california bar food in tapas size, my kind of food but since we were having dinner later... no food at Nihon, just drinks. the 2 girls were having pommergranate cosmo and some kind of whisky drinks, i had the vokda with ginger (may be infused???) and peach liqueur... i forgot the name of the drink but it was delish! and it was happy hour so we got a good deal, can't beat that.

Dinner time, yeah. the restaurant was a traditional Thai restaurant with traditional Thai interior. the crowd was mixed (because we were there)...or may be more family oriented. we had a table of 10 next to us with 4 noisy kids... and adults. the food were really good - authentic, said the birthday girl. we had the pad thai, of course. you can't eat at a Thai restaurant and not order pad thai. we also ordered the pooket skewers which are grilled shellfish (prawns, scallops, clams, mussels) and vegetables skewers, chicken curry, and asparagus with prawns in lobster sauce. everything was yummy... my favorite was the asparagus in lobster sauce. i was surprise they didn't have sticky rice, i was kind of in the mood for that instead of the regular jasmine rice.

anyway, we chowed down fast, it was not even 9 yet so we decided to go back to Nihon for 1 more round of deliciousness. we sat down at the same table, got the same waitress and she actually remembered what we had so we didn't even have to order! that's service.


Nihon
1779 folsom st. (at 14th)
san francisco, ca 94103
415.552.4400
http://www.dajanigroup.net/

Manora Thai
1600 folsom st (at 13th, i think)
san francisco, ca 94103
http://www.manorathai.com/