Sorry all, I've been kinda lazy recently, but I'm back...hopefully for a bit.
Osha is a chain Thai restaurant that is scattered all through out SF. We heard this place was good, so we decided to try the one on Second Street. My first impression of this place is loud. Although this place has ambience that resembles that of an upscale restaurant (ie dimly lit), the first thing that came to my mind when I entered this place is loud, perhaps quite as bad as your typical canto restaurant. We had to shout at one another to converse. This kinda ruined the entire dinner. However, the interior decor was top notch, from the lighting to the seats. Half the seating in the restaurant was a row of benches, each side of the bench bench seating maybe 5 people. The other half of the restaurant, where we sat, had nest chairs surrounding a square table. On one of the supporting beams was a wood carved wall hang. Very nice indeed.
Clearly we didn't order the right dishes because everything we ordered was just average. We ordered the special of the day that included BBQ pork, salad, and a cup of sticky rice. We also ordered their Pineapple Fried Rice, Larb salad, and Fried Banana with Ice Cream.
First, we were served the Larb salad. The ingredients included ground chicken with lime-juice, chili, red onion, green onion, and fresh mint. It arrived at our table with a bundle of mint leaves and other veggies on the bottom topped with the chicken. We thought it would be a cool refreshing salad, but WOOOOOO were we wrong. When the ingredients said chili, they meant chili full pieces of chili peppers. Not only were their pieces of full chili peppers in the salad, I think they also chopped some of the chili up into itty bits and pieces and hid them amongst the ground chicken, so every bite was fiery. Although I have a tolerance for spicy food, this came as a surprise and the combination was actually pretty gross. We had to mix the Larb with the pineapple fried rice to drown out the spiciness.
The pineapple fried rice was really standard and boring. With regards to presentation, they tried to be a little different than most other Thai restaurants so instead of being cliche and serving the rice in a semi-pineapple, they served it normally on a plate! How unique!... The fried rice was a little greasier than I liked it, but the sweetness was alright.
The BBQ pork is shown above and although it looks good, it doesn’t taste very different from the BBQ chicken you can get at a Hawaiian BBQ restaurant. It had a hint of peanut flavor, but really, all I could notice was that it was it's dryness, toughness, and chewy-ness. The accompanying salad was standard with a light vinaigrette. The sticky rice came unsweetened in a small bamboo cup.
Lastly came the over-sweetened caramelized fried bananas with coconut ice cream. The fried bananas were broken into chunks, deep fried in batter, and then pierced through a wooden skewer. Then they were leaned alongside the coconut ice cream. The ice cream was probably the best part of the meal as it actually had strips of coconuts in it.
We realized we missed a recommended dish, the Volcanic Beef, which is a grilled flank “stake” (yes…as spelled in the menu) submerged in their special Lava sauce and served hidden between the inner rings of a tower of onion ring. Oh well, my first experience was already pretty bad so they probably won’t be seeing me again unless someone ties me in chains and drags me in.
YelpHomepage Neighborhood: SOMA
149 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
