Santi Thai Fusion has replaced a downtown San Jose favorite, Sa-By Thai, located on S. Eighth Street and E. William Street, which closed at the end of August last year.
Santi Thai Fusion is a restaurant with authentic dishes that owner and cook Santi Muangkwa brought from Thailand.
“The food you see on the menu is very similar to other Thai restaurants, but here the flavor is a little different,” Muangkwa said.
Muangkwa was born and raised in Thailand and moved to America in 2003, but did not start learning how to cook until a couple years later.
“I moved to America to make a better life for myself,” Muangkwa said.
As he continued to learn to cook he decided he wanted to open a restaurant where people could enjoy authentic Thai food. At the end of last year, Muangkwa opened his restaurant and named it after himself.
Walking inside the restaurant, you are greeted with a bright smile and a warm welcome from the hostess. The restaurant’s light gray-colored walls are simple, but help spotlight the colorful plants and bring a zen calm to the atmosphere.
The air is scented with garlic, spices and a hint of a lit cucumber melon candle.
The menu has options that cater to a range of diets, including vegetarian and vegan.
When trying a new Thai restaurant, ordering a Thai tea is essential to me. The fresh and creamy tea can easily be ruined with a super milky consistency with no tea or an ultra-orange drink that tastes too sweet.
Santi Thai Fusion’s Thai tea was the perfect combination of milk and sweetness – smooth and creamy, almost as if you were drinking a cloud.
The Thai tea was only the beginning of a flavorful experience.
To start, I ordered the calamari and fish cakes for an appetizer.
Calamari is another make-or-break item for me, but here it was a hit. The breading was light and crisp with an audible crunch that would make ASMR lovers tingle with excitement.
The fish cake’s exterior was crispy with a light touch of freshness when topped with cucumber, cilantro and sweet and sour chili sauce. The fish cake itself was airy and could be cut with a fork easily.
Every item was fresh, hot and came out fast with a maximum wait time of approximately 10 minutes.
But nothing could prepare me for the explosion of flavor when the crab fried rice was brought to the table. The presentation was spectacular with bright vibrant specks of orange in the rice, topped by a peeled orange cut in the shape of a flower with a cherry in its center.
The portion size was hearty and filled with chunks of tender crab that were real – not artificial – and had a light,
buttery hint.
I added two different spicy chili sauces to the rice, but I quickly found out that it was not necessary at all because the entree was already doused in heat. However, that did not stop me from taking one bite after the other.
The heat of the chili formed sweat beads on my forehead and burned my mouth so good that it started to go numb. It was by far some of the best Thai food I’ve had.
For a new restaurant, Santi Thai Fusion did not disappoint and Santi Muangkwa created an atmosphere where the food and experience were pleasurable.
