Kiln opened on Brewer Street in 2016 and almost immediately redefined what Thai cooking could mean in London. Before Kiln, Thai food in the city existed largely in two registers: the high-gloss pan-Asian hotel restaurant and the neighbourhood takeaway. Kiln was neither. It was a 35-seat bar counter facing an open charcoal grill and a battery of clay pots, cooking food from northern Thailand and the borders of Myanmar and Yunnan with a precision and intensity that had not existed here before.
The room is deliberately minimal — a long counter, high stools, heat from the fire visible from every seat, the smell of charcoal and fermented fish sauce and dried chilli creating an atmosphere that is entirely specific to this address. There are no tablecloths, no ambient lighting designed to flatter anyone, no cocktail list made with cordials and sprigs. What Kiln offers instead is absolute focus: the cooking is the only theatre.
The menu changes daily and draws on the larder of northern Thailand — aged pork neck with garlic and pepper, glass noodles in clay pot with crab and salted egg, grilled lamb chops with nahm jim, baked field mushrooms with holy basil. The clay pot glass noodles have achieved near-mythical status among London's food community. The lamb skewers from the charcoal grill — aged meat, char, heat — are an argument for simplicity. The aged-lamb skewer in particular, developed from a recipe sourced from direct suppliers, has become the restaurant's signature statement of purpose.
Kiln does not take reservations for the counter, which is where you want to sit. Arrive, add your name to the list, wait at the bar downstairs. For groups of four or more, the basement dining room is available to book. Listed on the World's 50 Best Discoveries — the only Thai restaurant in London to be so — Kiln has the confidence of a restaurant that knows exactly what it is and has no ambition to be anything else.