Dubai is synonymous with luxury.

Dubai is synonymous with luxury. Whether talking about the city’s amazing skyscrapers, endless shopping, or high end hotels and restaurants, it is easy to understand why. But my first meal, I wanted something more on the casual side so I went to Café Isan (@cafeisan) for what @timeoutdubai rated the best Thai food in the city.

The Order - Chicken Laab Cakes, The Hustler and the Pink Noodles.

The Cost - ~$19 per person

The Fantastic - The Hustler, Café Isan’s version of popular Thai street food dish Pad Kra Pao, is a plate of wok fried Thai basil, red onions, green beans and chicken in a soy and garlic sauce and topped with a fried egg. The dish has wonderful flavors but what vaulted this dish into this rating was the addition of their absolutely delicious fish oil. Note that when you ask for medium spicy, your sinuses will be cleared out.

The Great - Laab, also sometimes called Larb or Laap, is a typical Thai appetizer made of minced meat. At Café Isan they offer chicken or papaya laab and they make small fried cakes out of it by combining your choice with lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, mint, coriander and onion. I ordered the chicken version and it was very good. The lemongrass and mint gave the cake a bit of a sweet taste and the dipping sauce it came with was lovely. Medium spicy was quite spicy.

The Okay - I wanted to try something unique so instead of ordering a pad thai or pad see ew, I got the Pink Noodles, a vermicelli noodle dish with vegetables. While the pink color of the noodles was fun, there wasn’t much flavor to the dish and I ended up using some of the sauces of the other dishes to flavor this one.

The Verdict - Eating at Café Isan, I felt like I was transported back to Bangkok. I love that the restaurant brings authentic Thai street food to its customers and that it serves as a great, often hard-to-find, casual option for diners in Dubai.