Osha Thai Restaurant Review, San Francisco

Reviewer: Foodnut.com Osha Thai 311 3rd Street (At Folsom) San Francisco, CA 94107 415-896-6742 415-896-6744 (Fax) Osha Thai Website

Osha Thai is a popular Thai restaurant in San Francisco that has grown to seven locations and was started in 1996 by sisters Wassana Korkhieola and Lalita Souksamlane. Osha means delicious in Thai. We visited the third Street location near Moscone Center. They focus on fresh, seasonal, local ingredients while serving both traditional Thai cuisine and modern interpretations. Our last visit was in April 2013 where we saw quality had fallen off. Be sure to try Kin Khao.

Decor, Vibe – Osha Thai Took over the old Bong Su location, retained the same layout with a bar/lounge on one side, and updated the art, color scheme, and lighting to very nice modern Asian. We ate lunch and noticed that the place was full of local workers taking advantage of the special lunch deal.

Osha Thai Menu

Osha Thai’s Lunch Menu has a great $15 “Premium Lunch” deal for drink, soup, appetizer, and entree. This review covers 3 of these lunch deals. We came for dinner in 2013 and found that they had a pretty long dinner menu with lots of options including lots of vegetarian dishes.

Osha Thai Signature Dishes – Pumpkin curry, Volcanic Beef, Pad See u

Website Osha Thai Menu

Osha Thai Full image set

Osha Thai Picks:
Thai iced tea was good, but pretty sweet and full of ice.

Green Tea Mojito ($11) was strong, balanced, and full of interesting flavor.

Spicy coconut soup with lemon grass, galangal, Kaffir lime leaf and mushroom, choice of chicken or vegetables had the typical strong robust flavors and was solid. Both soups tasted the same.

Tom Yum ($11) was very spicy and had a lot of mushroom and chicken.

Osha Fresh Spring Rolls – Deep fried tofu, bean sprouts, lettuce, mint, cilantro wrapped in fresh rice paper and served with homemade peanut dipping sauce was a refreshing and healthy appetizer with very fresh ingredients and an excellent peanut sauce.

Kobe Beef Salad ($16) had tasty and tender beef, but not a lot of it. We would not call this a salad but rather beef on a bed on a decorative greens.

Crunchy Calamari – served with green apple and Sriracha (chili sauce) cream was also an excellent appetizer that featured very crispy calamari that was fairly heavily battered.

Dungeness crab Rangoon – Dungeness crab meat, Philadelphia cream cheese, onion, and curate wrapped with crispy wonton served with spicy plum sauce was an interesting fusiony appetizer that adventurous folks might like.

Moroheiya Duck – roasted duck over streamed bok choy and Moroheiya organic Green Noodle with honey hoisin sauce was a good entrée that included little duck, mostly skin. The dish had lots of tasty noodles and a healthy serving of fresh bok choy.

White fish green curry – homemade whitefish ball, bamboo shoots, Thai basil, Thai eggplant, bell pepper with green curry sauce served with jasmine rice was surprisingly good and not too spicy. It had dark-colored but really tasty fish balls.

Grilled rib eye steak – grilled premium rib eye steak, steamed broccoli, carrot, top with onion rings and served with Lava sauce in jasmine rice had a pretty huge piece of meat grilled to a nice medium rare. Big thick onion rings. Lots of steamed vegetables to balance out the meat. Not exactly a Thai dish though!

Pad Thai ($12) was a beautiful noodle dish with lots of meat. One of the better dishes that evening.

Mango mania ($8) mango sorbet with bits of fresh mango and sweet sticky rice topped with mango purée looked great and was an excellent dessert, if you like mango! This dessert was very fruity with the rice balancing the fruit’s sweetness.

Mango Sticky Rice (Seasonal) ($8) was a decent dessert but on the small side.

OK:
Pomegranate Duck ($19) did not have a lot of duck, but the flavors were good.

Pans:
Mussamun Lamb ($25)
Grilled Sea Bass ($20)

Service – Osha Thai had decent service with servers and helpers cruising around all the time. Server was knowledgeable, friendly, and patient with us. Food comes fast during lunch.

Value – The lunch special was an excellent deal, few places dish up a multicourse high-quality lunch at this price.

Alternatives – Nearby restaurants include Zero Zero, Lulu’s, Town Hall.

Verdict – Osha Thai served up very good Thai food at extremely aggressive prices during lunch 2010. On our dinner visit in 2013, food quality had fallen off significantly. We can vouch for the other locations, but this third Street location might be worth a visit. Delivery available.

If would like to try something a little more traditional, try Lers Ros

Short wine list with wine by glass from $8, bottles from $34. Happy hour Mon-wed 3-10pm / Th-Sat 3-8pm with $5 wines, $6-7 cocktails, $3 beers, $5 small plates.

Also at:
696 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
415-673-2368

819 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.826.7738

149 2nd Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.278.9991

4 Embarcadero Center Street Level
San Francisco, CA 94111
415.788.6742

2033 Union Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.567.6742

2922 Diamond Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
415.586.6742

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