Thip Khao Restaurant — Restaurant in Washington

I was born in Vietnam, so I have been a neighbor with Laos people for more than 2 decades. However, I've never got a chance to experience their cuisine until nearly another decade later when I visited this restaurant. Upon the first impression of looking through their current menu (noted there are slight changes in their current menu compared to most menu's images posted on the review threads), I was struck with a certain familiarity of Thai's culinary ingredients (e.g. some spice, some saltness, tamarin, and coconut milk). While these are some common ingredients seen in Thai's dishes, Lao's dishes present the flavors of these ingredients in different angles, at least for me through: (1) Hu Muu Todd for starter (the pig ears were cooked well inside and covered with crispy lightly-battered coating layer) (2) Our first main dish Senh Mee Puu was great. I could smell and taste the wok's unique stir-fry feature. Crab meat was generous and flavorful, which I enjoyed much more than tiny threads of canned-crab meat or imitation crab in other restaurants. (3) We came here to taste Lao's culinary art as much as possible, so we ordered our second dish Moak Sea Bass. Coconut milk was cooked beautifully into their secret sauce. The thick texture of this sauce holds the junks of fish and thoroughly-chopped thyme together. This dish was delivered with a green color from wrapping banana leaves. I really like the thyme since I didn't know thyme can be cooked this way (I have seen people add thyme to clam chowder, and Vietnamese fish cake). Sticky rice was paired with this dish. (4) Finally, we treated our dinner with mango sticky rice dessert. A similar essence to Thai's mango sticky rice. But the mango is sweet so it is good!

Btw, the restaurant' vibe was great too. It reminds me of the vibe of the modest/simple/countryside of the south east asia country yet mixed with modern western style.

Since my wife and I are not from around D.C., we will definitely come back here in the...

Unfortunately, Thip Khao caused a food poisoning outbreak in two households over the weekend of January 17-19, 2025. If you have experienced any GI symptoms and/or vomiting within 48 hours of a recent visit then please contact the DC Health Department to file a report.

We were able to ID Thip Khao as the cause of our food poisoning because: (1) we were dining with another couple (from a different household) and this was the only meal or drink we shared together (three appetizers which we communicated to the health department) in the time leading up to our illness, and (2) members of both households developed the same symptoms at a similar time post dining which match the incubation period for a common food poisoning viral strain

We reported the food poisoning outbreak to Thip Khao the next day over the phone and the manager did not seem to understand what food poisoning is or the gravity of the issue. Instead she asked us if we had a “food allergy” - despite us clearly communicating the GI symptoms that occurred in two households. Thankfully a different member of the ownerships team called us the next day stating that they are taking the incident very seriously and they are investigating. She refunded what we paid for the meal - which we thought was a nice gesture. However, we would have greatly preferred to pay for our meal and not been seriously ill for a few days.

We are hopeful that the DC Health department will provide education to the Manager of Thip Khao regarding the differences between a food allergy and food poisoning. We also hope that the health department will require full sanitation of their kitchen and employees education regarding...

Absolutely delicious!!! I had been craving Laotian food for a long time and I am beyond overjoyed to have found this place in DC. I came here with a group of 10 people, and Thip Khao treated us all incredibly well. The service was speedy, thorough, and effectively perfect, and everyone's dishes were amazing. I tried the salmon moak, which is just wonderfully tender chunks of salmon steamed inside banana leaves with a super flavorful green curry sauce, coconut, wood ear mushroom, dill, and onion. It comes with a side of purple rice and is just wonderful. We also had a number of amazing appetizers for the table to share, including the tam son (green papaya salad), pak nam (crispy fried watercress salad), and chuenh taohu (crispy tamarind-glazed tofu). Each of them were absolutely incredible, especially the tofu and watercress salad. Both were the perfect level of crispiness, and the papaya salad was incredibly flavorful and had the exact level of spice that I was looking for. We ended the meal with their only dessert, khao long, which is pumpkin sticky rice with salted coconut and crispy mung bean. It was...wow. I was blown away by how amazing it was. It was very subtly sweet, which I really appreciated, and I loved the contrast between the soft and slightly sticky rice, the warm pumpkin and coconut sauce, and the crispy and light rice. It felt like the perfect autumn dessert to warm and fill your belly. They were also incredibly accommodating of dietary restrictions and allergies -- one of our group members had a severe peanut allergy, which can be tough in a Laotian restaurant, but Thip Khao handled it...