We've been exploring the restaurants near Borough Market for a while now, and this time our eye fell on Kolae, a Thai Grill restaurant. The ground floor consists of a bar area, with a few tables sprinkled around. Our table was on the second floor, with about a dozen tables in an L-shaped room, with rough brick walls.

The menu is extensive, and as we didn't quite know what to pick, we went for the easy option, and chose the set menu. We had the non-vegetarian set menu, but we see the website has a vegetarian set menu too. Both were dairy free, if that is a consideration.

The meal started with Biryani Rice Crackers with Pickled Ginger and Green Nahm Jim. A stack of crispy and tangy crackers showed up, with hints of spice and sour. For our starters, we were served Kolae Grilled Tiger Prawns. These had a lovely sauce covered, and were served with some kind of fruit, with the flavours of grape and citrus to squeeze on top. The Green Mango salad was also spicy, but at the same time sweet, with dried shrimp adding some crunch. The Soy-Braised Pork Belly showed up a while later — the kitchen had mixed something up. The wait was well worth it, as this was in our opinion the best dish on the menu. The sauce was sticky and rich, and the pork succulent and tender. The sauce was so good. A spoon was deployed to not leave any of the sauce behind. Due to the wait, we were also served a Chicken Bamboo Skewer, which was also awesome, this is an optional extra on the set menu.

As our main course, the menu provided us with Stir Fried Farm Greens, with some garlic and soybeans. At first, this looked really spicy due to the big chilly on top, but it turned out fairly mild. It fit well together with the Stonebass Curry, and the Hom Mali Rice.

We did not have space for dessert after this. It was a great meal, with interesting flavours. The restaurant is in a good location, very close to the Borough High Street exit of the London Bridge tube station. We would definitely recommend it, with the only critique that it can be a bit noisy upstairs if there is a loud group nearby.

Biryani Rice Crackers

1 / 8

Grilled Tiger Prawns

2 / 8

Green Mango Salad

3 / 8

Chicken Bamboo Skewer

4 / 8

Phuket Style Pork Belly

5 / 8

Stir Fry of Farm Greens

6 / 8

Gati Stonebass Curry

7 / 8

New Season Hom Mali Rice

8 / 8

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