Nari

Nari is a contemporary Thai restaurant inside Hotel Kabuki at 1625 Post Street in Japantown, from chef and owner Pim Techamuanvivit, who also runs Kin Khao in San Francisco and has held the kitchen at Bangkok's Nahm. The name is a Thai word for "women," chosen to honour the generations of Thai women who shaped the country's cooking, and the kitchen filters heritage recipes through California produce — brick-red bumbai curry with crisp fried eggplant and flaky roti, grilled Monterey squid in chilli-lime dressing with pork jowl. Dishes arrive family style with a degree of refinement, and the restaurant holds a Michelin star. Service is dinner only, from 5:30pm, and the room books out well in advance.

The bar runs a small, deliberately edited zero-proof list that sits on the same menu as the cocktails and wine rather than on a separate card — five spirit-free drinks at $16 each, priced with the cocktails. They are built on distilled non-alcoholic spirits rather than juice: the Unakarn (Seedlip Grove, shiso, lemongrass and tonic), the Suwan (Seedlip Grove, pomegranate and lime), the Nohra (Pentire Adrift, mint, lime and shiso), the Illa (Pentire, passionfruit, lemon and orgeat) and the dairy-forward Kusuma (mango lassi, pandan and pineapple). The editing is the point. Five drinks that each pair to a different part of a Thai menu — herbal, sour, sweet-sharp, and one lassi-style pour built to sit against chilli heat — is more useful across a shared table than a longer list of variations on the same sweet profile. Shiso and lemongrass recur because they bridge the drinks to the food rather than competing with it. For a non-drinker, Nari is one of the few Michelin-starred rooms in the city where the alcohol-free option is a considered part of the beverage programme rather than an improvisation requested at the table.