This past sunny weekend had us strolling through the West, enjoying a change of scenery and the extra spring in people’s step that always shows up just as spring is first in the air. Although we were way out near Heidelberger Platz, we headed north past the Fehrbelliner Platz flea market up to Kantstrasse, where the best Thai food in Berlin was softly but insistently calling to us.

At the risk of telling you something you already know, Dao serves authentic Thai cuisine and is, according to authorities both well-informed and not-, the best Thai restaurant in town. It’d be a shame then to simply order something chicken something curry with rice; here you should try perhaps more unfamiliar dishes, or ones you had in Thailand but were always afraid to order in Berlin for fear of missing out on about half the ingredients.

The bright and fresh soups and salads were particularly alluring last weekend, but there’s an entire section of the expansive menu just in Thai that begs, nay, demands future exploratory visits. I can especially recommend the Pla Dug Fu, a green mango salad resting on an impossibly fluffy fried catfish that adds an addictive crunch to each bite.

Though my stomach may have complained afterwards, I asked for ‘Thai scharf’, which resulted not in just a little dish of added chilies, but the exact mildly numbing burn I loved so much in Bangkok. A request to switch out chicken for tofu was handled beautifully too, the tofu just the right kind of chewy. Now to go back with a few more friends and order a whole fried fish, Pla Thod Prik Tai Dam, or some duck salad, Laab Ped, I can’t wait.