One day you are fizzing with ambition and full of wide-eyed admiration for the world. The next, you are at the birthday party of a restaurant. Didn’t I use to be a serious person? Anyway, happy first birthday to the beloved Singburi of Shoreditch. Before its E1 reinvention, this Thai restaurant used to live in Leytonstone, which is actually further away than Thailand – or at least takes as long to get to.
I am glad for the convenience on today of all days. Intrepid bohemian though I might be, I have no interest in going to Leytonstone in this heat – I have no interest in going further than a metre from my sofa in this heat. But it is dinner time and hell if you think I am turning on the oven. Singburi makes sense: who else would better understand how to cater to the hot weather than the Thais? Certainly not the English – could you imagine eating a Yorkshire pudding in these circumstances? The Russians would try to give you stroganoff.
No, the Thais will know what to do. This cannot be said for me – I glance at the menu and wonder if I will need a Rosetta Stone-style implement to parse it, or an education in Thai gastro-linguistics, which I bet you don’t have either. Go on, what’s moo krob, off the top of your head? Right, now we’ve got that out the way. I sheepishly ask the waiter about three questions too many before just throwing my hands up and kind of salvo-ing my way through the order.
We end up with more pork than is necessary – it arrives on sticks, it arrives in cubes, more of it arrives on sticks. “Please cool it with the pork sticks,” I want to say, but I suspect it is my fault that this is happening. In any case, several pigs were harmed in the making of this restaurant. There are also fruit salads – watermelon and blackberry – moonlighting as savoury side dishes. There is duck, which someone has minced for my benefit, tossed with lime and chilli. And then the clams – nasty, saline little creatures but put that down to a matter of personal preference.
It’s a good restaurant somewhat stunted by its location – under a smoggy railway bridge near the even smoggier Old Street roundabout. But recommending a restaurant to you is not the point. Some might say this is a rather outré approach to writing a food column and to that I say zip it! No, I am here to stoke nationalist tensions, thank you very much. And here goes: I was right, the Thais really do know how to cater to the heat. In fact, they might do it best.
And let me tell you why. Lunch consumed in a furnace must be both spicy and light. It is not enough just to be spicy – go ahead and eat a laal maas when it’s 300C out there and tell me how you feel. Nor is it enough to just be light – sushi cannot stand up to the elements, the noise of the heat drowns out the raw fish and turns the rice insipid. You need something robust and muscular, but not thick and weighed down by dairy.
Thai – with all its chilli, lime, coriander and lemongrass – fulfils the demands of the formula, lovingly handed on from me to you. But Finn! Yes, yes, I hear you: wouldn’t this apply to Vietnam too? Indonesia? Cambodia? Sure, by and large. But Cambodia relies too heavily on freshwater fish. Indonesia? No idea. And I didn’t eat in a Vietnamese restaurant last night, so what am I supposed to do about it? Arbitrary, sweeping generalisations have never been a crime as far as Silver Spoon is aware.
For all the French, erm, resource extraction in South-East Asia, they somehow never managed to internalise this message, and so it is up to me to impart it. Which I will do with customary grace. I cannot imagine a city I would like to eat in less during the summer than Paris. Vienna, perhaps. But Europe is going to have to learn.
Tedious policy wonks keep blathering on about how Britain is a hot country these days; how Britain needs better hot-weather infrastructure, how air conditioning should be as rudimental as heating. Sure, whatever. But what about the need for hot-weather restaurants? Lime-inflected salads and zingy stir-fries? Say it with me: this is not the time for cassoulet!
[Further reading: Ice cream is so hot right now]
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This article appears in the 15 Jul 2026 issue of the New Statesman, After Keir Starmer
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