Tha Phraya – a Bangkok pier reimagined on Second Avenue

Tha Phraya holds a storefront on Second Avenue in Yorkville, between 80th and 81st Streets, in a room built to feel less like the Upper East Side and more like a restaurant on the banks of Bangkok's Chao Phraya River. The name itself translates loosely to "a pier on the Phraya River," and the fit-out carries the idea through: a mosaic mirror of the temple Wat Arun covers the back wall, with further décor further into the room nodding to a 1960s Bangkok theatre. The restaurant opened in March 2024 in a space that had briefly housed the kosher-Asian restaurant Cho-Zen, and quickly built a following for cooking that reaches well past the pad thai and green curry that define its Second Avenue neighbours. It holds a Bib Gourmand, the MICHELIN Guide's distinction for good quality, good value cooking, in both the 2024 and 2025 selections.

01The room and the setting

From outside, gleaming doors and thrown-open shutters make Tha Phraya easy to spot on a stretch of Second Avenue otherwise given to quieter frontages. Inside, the pier-restaurant concept is literal rather than decorative: the Wat Arun mosaic anchors the back of the room, and the space shifts toward a 1960s Bangkok theatre feel as it goes back, a deliberate attempt to carry diners from the Upper East Side to the river that gives the restaurant its name.

The room replaced Cho-Zen, a short-lived kosher-Asian restaurant, and sits within ten blocks of at least three other Thai kitchens on the same avenue — a crowded field Tha Phraya set out to distinguish itself from by looking past the staple dishes most people associate with Thai menus.

02Who's behind it

Tha Phraya is the work of co-owner Manna Che, who was born in Phuket and came to the United States at thirteen. Before opening her own restaurant she spent two years at Soothr Thai Noodle Bar on the Lower East Side, where she has said she learned how to run a restaurant from the ground up. In the kitchen, Chef Rattana has more than 15 years culinary experience in New York, and comes from a family of restaurateurs in Thailand, a background that shows in a menu built on homestyle technique rather than restaurant shortcuts.

Insider tip

Reachable via the Q and 4/5/6 subway lines at 77th or 86th Street; business casual dress.

03The cooking

The kitchen's range becomes clear once you move past the familiar green curry and Thai iced tea on the menu's opening page. The menu includes specialties from all over Thailand, like spring rolls with northern sai oua sausage, and a fried branzino in sour, spicy kaeng som from the south, a dish that comes in a tangy kaeng som curry that's hard to stop eating, even as it bubbles down into a thicker, spicier sauce over the course of dinner.

Elsewhere, the pomelo salad, strewn with tiny little fish, is fantastic, and you can taste the smoky kiss of the wok in the crab fried rice, topped with a curry-infused omelet. It is this kind of attention — freshly pounded spice pastes rather than bottled sauces — that separates the kitchen from the neighbourhood's more conventional Thai rooms.

04What to order

The kitchen's own favourites give a good map of the menu: a Phuket-style Kang Pu, a spicy crab curry served with vermicelli noodles, and Nuer Toon Mor Fai, a beef soup stewed slowly in the style of central Bangkok, both among the dishes owner Manna Che points to as the restaurant's defining plates. For something lighter, Pak Mor is a rice crepe filled with sweet radish, red onion and coconut, soft outside and crisp within.

To finish, the Ice Cream Mor Fai arrives as three scoops served together in a hot pot with a seasonal topping — a dessert built for sharing, in keeping with the rest of the menu. The miang kham platter, built from betel leaves folded around toasted coconut, peanuts, dried shrimp, lime and chilli, is worth ordering at the start of the meal: the restaurant itself treats it as the dish that best sums up the layered sweet, sour, salty and spicy character of Thai cooking.

05Drinks

The drinks list steps away from Thai iced tea too. A not-too-sweet bael mocktail and a miang kham platter are a nice way to wake your tastebuds to the range of perfectly balanced flavors you're about to encounter, and the restaurant keeps a separate cocktail menu alongside beer and wine for those who want something stronger to go with the spice.

06The neighbourhood

Tha Phraya sits in Yorkville, a stretch of the Upper East Side already dense with Thai kitchens on the same avenue, yet its regional focus and river-restaurant design set it apart from its neighbours. The address at 1553 2nd Ave places it squarely in the Upper East Side, accessible by the Q and 4/5/6 subway lines at 77th or 86th Street, making it an easy stop before or after a walk through the museum-lined blocks nearer Fifth Avenue.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.