SAPPEISAN
Isan cooking over charcoal on West 14th Street, ping-yang skewers first, and a kitchen that says outright it is not making your pad thai.
Why go
The room comes from the Soothr team and the food is E-San, the northeastern Thai cooking that runs on fermented funk, chili and smoke rather than on coconut sweetness. Skewers are the format. The kitchen leads on grilled meat on bamboo in the ping-yang style and sets its own terms against the standards, promising unique Thai dishes
and naming crying tiger, spicy minced duck and a tiger prawn hot pot as what it wants ordered. Jeff saved it as Sappe in June 2024, and the same door now trades under the longer name.
Order this / avoid
- Order: skewers first, moo ping and nuer ping, with luke chin ping, the grilled chicken meatballs, alongside. Then som tum, and the Tom Yum tiger prawn hot pot if there are four of you. Mama e-la noodles to fill it out.
- Avoid: the safe order. The kitchen has said what it is doing and pad thai is not on the plan.
What locals & experts say
- SAPPEISAN, on its own name:
Sappe
isa Thai word meaning to joyfully consume or partake of the objects or in the experience,
and the page sets the room in theThai Golden Age
of the 1950s and 1960s.1 - The record is thin here. No approved source has published a verdict on this kitchen, so everything above is the kitchen's own account.
Good to know
- Timing: lunch and dinner, with a break in the afternoon.
- Booking: book for a table of four or more; the hot pot is a group order.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: Skewers!
Verdict
could-visit — A charcoal skewer counter doing Isan food on West 14th Street, from the Soothr team, and it says out loud what it is not interested in: the conventional Thai menu, pad thai included. The format is ping-yang, meat on bamboo over coals, with moo ping and nuer ping the two to start on and grilled chicken meatballs beside them. Som tum and a tom yum hot pot with tiger prawns carry the rest. Jeff starred it in June 2024 and wrote one word, skewers, and his pin lands on the door that now trades under a longer name. It sits at could-visit and no higher for a simple reason: everything above is the kitchen describing itself, and nobody has published a verdict on whether the coals are handled well.