Tuk Tuk Thai Cuisine

The Restaurant

Tuk Tuk Thai Cuisine occupies a narrow second-floor walk-up on South Main Street in Hanover, directly opposite the Dartmouth Green, opened in 2013 by Bangkok-born chef-owner Ko Sa-ngwan after a long apprenticeship in Boston's Chinatown Thai kitchens. The room itself is modest — about forty-five covers across a long dining room with hardwood floors, dark-wood tables, a hanging-lantern lighting scheme, and a small bar near the entrance. The walk-up staircase from Main Street is the only signal of the room above; the entrance is easy to miss for a first-time visitor.

The cooking is unambiguously Thai with the heat-and-spice register that genuinely matches Bangkok rather than the lower-heat New England compromises that dominate the region. Signature dishes include the pad see ew with broad rice noodles and Chinese broccoli; the panang curry with chicken or beef; the basil-and-chili soft-shell crab in season; the tom kha gai coconut soup; and a green papaya salad — som tum — that the kitchen makes to whatever heat level a confident guest requests. The menu carries about sixty items across appetisers, soups, salads, noodles, curries, and rice dishes; the cookery is consistent, the wok work is hot and fast, and the daily lunch specials run at about $14 for a serious bowl.

The drinks programme is a careful Thai-and-Southeast-Asian beer-and-cocktail list — Singha, Chang, and Tiger on draft; a serious lemongrass-and-ginger gimlet on the cocktail card; and a small but considered wine list of about thirty bottles biased toward off-dry Riesling and Gewürztraminer that pair with the heat. The room is busy with Dartmouth students midweek and a mixed local-and-college crowd on weekends. For a Hanover meal that is consistently the best food-per-dollar in the area, Tuk Tuk is the answer.