Singburi.

Singburi

Sirichai Kularbwong rebuilt his parents' 1999 Leytonstone institution around a central grill in Shoreditch, reopening 19 June 2025 (Hot Dinners; Time Out).

Why go

The Leytonstone restaurant opened in 1999 and ran three distinct lives, which Jonathan Nunn sets out precisely: a local's place where you knew Thelma and Tony Kularbwong by name and drank whatever you carried in, then from about 2016 a destination for the blackboard of specials their son Sirichai was writing, then after 2020 a restaurant whose main event was getting a table at all (Vittles). Time Out made it Restaurant of the Year in 2021. The National Restaurant Awards put it 73rd in the UK in 2023, which Nunn calls an anomaly in a list dominated by central London and Michelin-starred destination restaurants. The Infatuation scored it 9.8 in 2024, its highest mark in any city it covers. Then the parents retired, and Siri moved the whole thing to Unit 7 Montacute Yards, just off Shoreditch High Street, with two partners: Nick Molyviatis, a founding chef at Kiln, who now runs the kitchen jointly with him, and Alexander Gkikas of Catalyst in Holborn. The format is a central grill with 19 seats around it and about 40 more in the room. The kitchen took a Michelin Bib Gourmand in the 2026 guide, announced on 3 February 2026, in a category Michelin defines as restaurants offering excellent value for the quality of their cooking (Hot Dinners). What arrived with the move: a licence, 14 wines by the glass, and a cocktail list built with Vassilios Kyritsis of Athens' The Clumsies. What did not change: the heat, and the total absence of dessert.

Order this / avoid

• Order: off the grill and into the curries. The beef mince ka prao comes out blazing, fragrant with holy basil and heavy on the heat, the grilled lamb short ribs arrive bite-sized and charred at the edges, and the tiger prawn and cucumber curry is smooth, silky, and swimming with coconut richness4. From the launch list, the dill and lemongrass pork sausage, the wild ginger chicken thigh, the prawn and betel leaf southern curry and the smoked pork belly with green peppercorn. Get a watermelon and strawberry salad on the table as the cooling counterweight. Drink your own wine at GBP 33 corkage, or take a makrut lime leaf gimlet.
• Avoid: planning on pudding. There is no dessert, deliberately, exactly as there was none in Leytonstone.

What locals & experts say

• Jonathan Nunn, Vittles (18 July 2025): on the old restaurant, the Leytonstone Thai cafe that has been accused by multiple credible publications of being the single best restaurant in London, whose trajectory is perhaps, the most unlikely London restaurant story of the past decade. On the new one he is deliberately unhelpful, and says why: I cannot review the new Singburi. I spent so many evenings in the old restaurant that I got to know and became friends with Siri. His reservation about the move is on the record anyway: Montacute Yards is a new cookie-cutter development backed by real-estate developers Brockton Capital and Blackstone, and calling the new place Singburi is bound to unsettle those who remember the oddities and unsanded edges of the original.1
• Jason Allen, The Nudge (26 June 2025), a week after opening: against all odds, despite the polish, that hard-to-pin-down chaotic magic is, somehow, still there. On the kitchen: Still an unfiltered spice gauntlet. The air is genuinely laced with enough chilli fumes to make the weaker amongst us weep.4
• Leonie Cooper, Time Out (4 February 2025): Singburi is the outstanding family-run restaurant which Time Out recently voted the best Thai restaurant in London, and was Time Out's Restaurant of the Year in 2021, known for its iconic blackboard menu, featuring god-tier dishes such as moo krob (crispy pork belly), salted fish rice, and bowls of spicy clams.2
• MICHELIN Guide 2026, Bib Gourmand: one of 13 new London Bibs, announced 3 February 2026, described in Hot Dinners' roundup as Version 2.0 of one of London's best Thai restaurants.5
• Local rec: Jeff has it as a Vittles top pick with multiple recommendations, and Time Out's best-Thai vote is the published half of that. REAL.

Good to know

• Where it is now: Unit 7 Montacute Yards, 185-186 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6HU, moments from Shoreditch High Street Overground. Do not go to Leytonstone.
• Timing: closed Monday. Tuesday to Saturday noon to 3pm and 5pm to 10.30pm, Sunday noon to 3pm and 5pm to 10pm (venue).
• Booking: there is a real booking system now, which there was not before. The restaurant also holds space back for walk-ins and says "Walk-ins welcome", though The Nudge reports it is "crazily busy."
• BYOB survived: bring wine at GBP 33 corkage. Time Out reported in February 2025 that BYOB would end with the move; it did not.
• Where to sit: the counter seats around the central grill. Everyone who has written about the room says the same thing.
• No dessert. Plan somewhere else for pudding.
• Dietary: nothing published at all. The venue's site is one page with no menu on it, and the cooking runs on fish sauce, shrimp paste and chilli, so ask directly.
• Hygiene: no FSA record could be found for Singburi at this address as of 30 July 2026, searched by name and by postcode, although neighbouring units in the same development are registered at rating 5. That is an absence of a record rather than a bad rating.
• The old site: a different Thai restaurant has taken over the Leytonstone unit, and it is a separate business, not covered here.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Multiple recs, vittles top pick; move heaven and earth for res? Top thai timeout" REAL. The Time Out best-Thai vote checks out. On moving heaven and earth for a reservation: no longer necessary, because the Shoreditch room takes bookings and keeps walk-in space.

Verdict

must-visit — Twenty-two years in, with no PR and no ambition beyond its own street, a family Thai cafe in Leytonstone was voted the best restaurant in London by Time Out in 2021 and then scored 9.8 by The Infatuation in 2024, the highest mark in any city it covers. Now Sirichai Kularbwong has taken it over from his parents, moved it to a central grill in Shoreditch with Nick Molyviatis out of Kiln, and taken a Michelin Bib Gourmand in the 2026 guide. The chilli fumes still make people cry, BYOB survived at GBP 33 corkage, and there is still no dessert. Sit at the counter around the grill.