Former Mekong Thai Restaurant on O'Farrell

[Sharon S.]

What is the name of the place that took over for Mekong? Has anyone eaten there yet?

[Robert Lauriston]

Second branch of Bang San.

[david kaplan]

Interesting. I've liked my meals at the original Bang San. It's not quite Thai House Express, though Bang San's larb is just about as good as I've ever had. Haven't tried the new location.

Bang San is halal, by the way.

[SteveG]

Since I don't see too many other recent reports, we had lunch at the new location on Sunday.

Papaya Salad: a good rendition; I'm rarely bowled over by this salad but it was way better than the local average.
Grilled Lamb: very good, with an addictive peppery fishy sauce to pour over it; a few years back someone said the larb dishes were a strength of Bang San, but I'll go out on a limb and say it's the lamb dishes, given their stringent Halal sourcing.
Duck noodle soup: very nice with an amazing depth of flavor. The duck itself was perhaps too smokey, but then again duck in soups like this almost never has any meat and is there mainly to add flavor, so when I balanced little morsels of it with some noodles it was perfect.
Pumpkin curry with beef: this was a red curry, with very good flavor. Pumpkin nicely distinct yet had absorbed just the right amount of flavor, beef long cooked to a perfect stringy curry-soaked consistency, good flavor balance overall and to my mouth definitely house made curry paste.

I'd say this was all around a very good Thai meal for San Francisco, where each of the four dishes we ordered was good without any clunkers. Occasionally I've had a better individual dish at the original Bang San, Marnee Thai, or Thai House Express, but never such a consistently tasty meal.

The table next to us was a mix of vegetarian and vegan, and the waiter was extremely happy to tailor each of the regular menu dishes to their taste, offering fake chicken or tofu as protein substitutes wherever they liked. They may also have other meat subsitutes available, but that's really not my thing so I didn't ask.

I'm excited by the recent string of new Thai openings down in Little Saigon with the thread on Lers Ros--perhaps the foo dog statues have brought good luck to chow in that neighborhood.

The one thing that disappoints me about Bang San is the menu is pretty standard, without any unusual dishes. That disappointment is balanced by them having a waiter who is adequately bilingual to take us seriously when we ask for the food to be seasoned like we have it on trips to Thailand

Who knows, maybe Thai House Express will even manage to replace the chef they lost to the Oakland restaurant with someone even better?

[Ruth Lafler]

Thanks for the report:

Anyone know why chow places has a restaurant by the same name on Jones? Did it move?

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Bang San Thai Cuisine (Second Location)
791 Ofarrell St, San Francisco, CA 94109

[SteveG]

Bang San on Jones is the original tiny location with 6 or so tables, I just updated the place locations to help clear it up. Per the web site, both locations are open, but the second one has a nicer interior and is much larger, with seating for at least 60 people.

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Bang San Thai Cuisine (Original)
505 Jones St, San Francisco, CA 94102