Isarn Thai Soul Kitchen — Restaurant in Kirkland

I thought they had great food overall! There were definitely dishes that I thought were highlight, and some that I thought could use some fine tuning, but overall I had a pleasant experience visiting here. They are also located at a beautiful location with easy access to the lake nearby, which helps tremendously because one can easily take a walk after a meal there.

My friends and I ordered some items off the happy hour menu first. The Thai green papaya salad was great and not too overpowering, which meant that it didn't need rice or cabbage to neutralize the flavor. I would definitely recommend it. The lemongrass wings were tiny and slightly dry, so I think maybe using bigger wings might help? Unsure if it was air fried or deep fried, but deep fried should also help retain the size. And the mussels omelette didn't have enough eggs but lots of crispy fried parts and I couldn't really taste enough mussels. It was slightly underseasoned as well lacking a bit of flavor. The texture was great, though!

In terms of the main dishes, both the phad see eiw and the crab fried rice were not seasoned enough, so they both tasted a bit plain. Increasing the amount of salt should help, in my opinion. The vegan cabbage with black pepper was very well-seasoned as the black pepper was very potent and carried the dish's flavor. The northern style sweet curry and the seafood curry custard (hormok) were both purely amazing! They had a good amount of meat and a very balanced amount of coconut milk to provide the curry with both texture and flavor. I ended up using some of the crab fried rice as normal rice to eat with the curry because those dishes for some reason didn't come with rice (maybe we had to ask for it). Regardless, highly recommend those two! Then finally, the stir fried squid with salted egg yolk was solid as well. Not wow amazing but definitely good and worth it.

We had the sweet young coconut cream for dessert and it was very tasty! Having it inside a coconut was cute and the feeling of hot coconut cream was extremely pleasant!

Overall I would recommend this place for those who would like to...

Waste of time. I wanted to take my adult kids to dinner. Website says open till 9pm but when We arrived at 8pm they were no longer seating. We were dressed up for dinner. I picked my daughter up from college for us to stand in the rain to order grub hub style. I hoped the food would at least make-up for the street service. I pre-ordered a cocktail why we waited in the rain. The mango sticky rice cocktail was grossly sweet and thick like creamy jello. I tried to save it for dessert, but none of us liked it and we tossed it out. The vegan fried rice was tasty, but don’t expect the rice to be fried. It was white rice topped with fried tofu, & large tomatoes and cucumber garnishes. The vegan fried mushroom appetizer was tasty and the winner of the night. The wings were just okay. We ordered vegan papaya salad which looked good, but when we opened it it reaked of fish sauce. Double checked the receipt and we ordered VEGAN. So their mistake. We we were disappointed to have to toss the whole thing. Had they actually sat us inside, we could have told the waitress about the mistake and had it swapped for the right food, but because it was “to go” we are stuck with our incorrect order. We drove it home to eat on a actual table and and ended up throwing half of it out. I was still hungry, still did dishes, and had to now clean out to go containers (which is why I don’t do delivery and we drove to eat out!) now I had to fill up the food waste and take it out so my house would not smell of fish sauce. Wow! What a waste of a night. I should have just cooked and saved myself time and money. For me the whole point of eating out is to “treat” my family, to not do dishes, and to not have to clean to go containers. I realize this place is a tourist whole with NO SOUL. I won’t go back or recommend. Even if we did get a table the prices were too high for the quality of food and service. I was disappointed. I waited till the next day to review when I was less hungry and slept on it. I still feel the same. If you are discerning like me, avoid this place. This might be my first...

TL;DR: do not come eat here if you have food allergies - staff not trained on handling allergies

Came here with my boyfriend who had food allergies last week and our experience was horrible. Talked to 2 waitresses and neither of them understood how to handle food allergies. Both had trouble understanding my boyfriend is allergic to soy, gluten AND dairy and kept repeating "our food is gluten free meaning even the soy sauce used in the food is gluten free so it's safe for you to eat". Took a lot of effort to communicate that soy & gluten allergies are different allergies and gluten-free doesn't mean soy free. Always thought this is common sense in food industry but apparently not the case here.

We ordered appetizers (first waitress told us they are fine for my boyfriend's allergies), but after we confirming with a second waitress multiple times, all meat in the restaurant have been marinated in soy sauce and my boyfriend can't actually eat much of what we ordered.

What's worse, they didn't TRY to understand allergies either or take it seriously. Both waitresses showed us an annoyed look when we mentioned food allergies, and they kept repeating food is gluten free and ignoring our questions on soy & dairy. In other restaurants we've been to, whenever the staff do not know for sure what's in their food, they willingly go to the kitchen to double check with the chef. Here I feel like they don't know and don't really care - they just want you to order something quickly.

We've been to many Thai food places in the area already and honestly this was the worst experience that we had. The service does not live up to the prices...