Kothai Republic — Restaurant in San Francisco

I was intrigued by the unique and concise menu at KoThai Republic, a Korean and Thai fusion restaurant in the Inner Sunset of San Francisco. The owners Sung Park and Gof Sanguanwong previously ran a food truck Spork and Stix, and this is their first brick and mortar restaurant.

The weekend menu is the same for both brunch and dinner - a vibrant mix of sharable small plates and comforting rice and noodle dishes. There were dishes that you may expect from KoThai’s name, like bibimbap and tom yum noodle soup. I was also excited to see other influences, like an impressively flavorful Taiwanese beef noodle soup with a base made from scratch.

Some of the more fusion dishes included kimchi fried rice balls - a nod to Italian arancini, but with kimchi, bacon, cheddar filling. The KoThai ceviche was Park’s more accessible spin on traditional gejang, or Korean marinated raw crab. This (still quite spicy) version featured cured raw shrimp, served in lettuce cups. I also liked the eye-catching presentation of the grilled hamachi collar, usually a modest side dish. Served over an addictively good bed of fish sauce-loaded bread crumbs and broccolini, the collar could be the main star.

The king salmon haw mok, traditionally a Thai fish curry steamed in banana leaves, featured baek (white) kimchi wrapped salmon in a hearty bowl of green curry. And the Korean spicy noodle dish was such an enjoyable combo of bibim guksu (spicy sweet cold noodles) with Thai style grilled pork jowl.

Dessert was also memorable - a cute apple pie steamed cheesecake served in a glass jar. Brown sugar crumble and lime zest topped off this crustless combo.

Service was very friendly, with Sung checking in multiple times and explaining the personal inspiration and context behind many of the dishes. Definitely a neighborhood gem worth going out of...

This is a perfect small trendy restaurant on your corner. Reminds me of ny. Food is carefully crafted and the staff are diligently servicing. It's a bright place with large windows so you feel the vibrant city outside the restaurant. The only complaint was that their spicy is surprisingly not spicy. Favorite was ceviche but the cold noodles, you can skip. Ceviche had the most interesting flavor profile and it just had a very fresh seafood opening with a fantastic citrus note finished with a little bit of bitter green that cleaned your palette. Seabeam was also good with nice clean mango sauce that you can really enjoy the mild flavor of seabeam. Lovely flavor combination. Bibimbob was surprisingly good with a very pretty presentation and perfectly cooked veggies. They give you extra sauce so don't put it all in at once. Tom Yum noodle soup was packed with great flavors and perfectly cooked crispy pork and egg. Though for my taste, can be a little less salty. Jowl was good but the noodles were meh. Lacking in flavor for me. Their drinks (non-alcoholic) looked pretty too but we got hot tea instead. Idk how often their menu changes, but def worth checking it out. Was around $40 per person but with drinks would be more. Worth the price tags. We had a giant stroller so they kindly kept it on the back for us. But don't recommend going there with a stroller. Overall food was very pretty and had great flavors that were...

Not sure if we just had an off night but most our food was solid good, but not great. We came before and had a great brunch, this time we tried dinner, and it's a seasonal menu. We are all our food because we don't like to waste and nothing was BAD, but we left kind of ho-hum.

Melon salad with prosciutto: Was solid good, but nothing special. The type of melon was fairly mild, but it all went together pretty well. 4 star

Grilled octopus: The sauce and beans were really good, yummy flavor. The octopus itself was a bit mushy in areas compared to other octopus dishes I've had. Not bad, just a little over maybe. 4 star

Whipped ricotta with tomato and focaccia: the tomato was delicious but the ricotta tasted more like mayo and the bread was sopping in oil. I squeezed it and you could see oil running out and dripping. 1 star for bread, 3 star for ricotta, 5 star for tomatoes, overall 3 star.

Pork chop: very well cooked but basically on top of a pile of mayonnaise-like sauce that was way overkill. There was a small relish on the side but the relish had almost no flavor and there was only a small amount. 2 star.

Lamb roti: very very tender and well cooked, sauce and onion base was delicious! Roti was yummy and it had our favorite component of the night which was a nice zesty green sauce (lime-ish).

With half stars I'd bump to 3.5 for our meal, but rounded down because it still just overall felt a bit meh...