RESTAURANT REVIEW: Sao Lao Thai Café
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I've often hinted at my disappointment at the state of Thai restaurants in Houston in previous reviews. This cuisine has perhaps the highest delta between well-executed (which can rank among the best food in the world) and average. Outside of one absolute god-tier restaurant (Street To Kitchen, which I need to write about soon considering how often I reference it) and a couple of other decent options, the majority of Thai eateries in our city churn out replacement-level kaengs and pad thai, most of which I'd rather just skip. But I badly want this not to be the case, so I'm constantly on the lookout for somewhere that could change my mind. That quest brought me to Sao Lao, which was ranked on the Houston Chronicle Top 100 in 2025, though I should have known that the Bao Ong-curated list could not be fully trusted.
The restaurant is located in the ill-defined and uncreatively-named Northside neighborhood, on Shepherd a few miles beyond 610. A small standalone building plopped between countless strip malls, you'd be forgiven if you missed this one while driving by. I'm thinking this is more of a lunch place, because the latest dinner reservation they offered was 6:45 PM (before closing at 8:00). That booking ended up being absolutely not necessary, because when we entered at the appointed time we were literally the only diners in the lowbrow ten-table dining room, though a couple of other parties did arrive shorty after.
Despite having "Thai Cafe" in the name, this spot leans Lao, with more than half of the dishes on offer hailing from that background. What's the difference between the two, you may be asking? Not a ton, as it were... they use mostly similar ingredients and techniques, and there's definitely a lot of overlap. Thai food often requires longer simmering or overnight marination, as well as utilizing more curry and coconut milk, resulting in richer, deeper flavors. Lao cuisine is often saltier and uses copious amounts of lime, as well as their essential ingredient padaek, a condiment made from fermented freshwater fish. I don't have a ton of experience with Laotian (which I believe is technically a widely-used misnomer, akin to Croat vs Croatian, but I think it's pretty clear I write like I'm paid by the character, so I'll stick the extra four letters on there every once in awhile) food, or much knowledge about the country in general (Chloe Dao is the only person born in Laos I can name, and even she is technically Vietnamese) outside of opium production and drug trade in the Golden Triangle, though I'd be lying if I said I didn't try to find a way to tack on a couple of days in Luang Prabang to my next trip to Southeast Asia.
For starters (pun?), the Lao Pork Fried Eggrolls served with lettuce, cilantro, carrots, and Lao seasoned fish sauce with green onions. I would call these small-to-medium sized, and they came out piping hot with crisp shells fried to a golden brown color. It's hard to screw up egg rolls (except for one time recently when I received an order where the inside was completely uncooked at a fast-casual Vietnamese place that I won't put on blast, but you know who you are), so these were predictably solid, if not earth-shattering. One thing I found odd was the long strands of raw, non-pickled carrot. That orange vegetable is fairly ubiquitous as an accoutrement alongside daikon, but they are almost always vinegar-cured, which obviously makes them better. Perhaps this is a Vientianese variant that I am just unaware of, but I certainly prefer the acidity of the traditional preparation.
The highly-recommended Lao Beef Jerky was sold out, so we pivoted to the Lao Pork Sausage instead, which, wouldn't you know it, ended up being the highlight of the meal. House-made links were sliced into chunks and plated with a side of sticky rice (an important culinary staple in Laos, I'm told) and Lao tomato sauce. Grilled exquisitely, biting into the casing elicited a satisfying snap, which gave way to the highly aromatic, juicy interior bursting with lemongrass, garlic, and other herbs as well as some mild chili heat. The accompanying dipping sauce was salty and smoky, with some fermented flavors to make things interesting. I thought the cellophane-enclosed sticky rice was an unusual pairing, and I wasn't entirely sure how to eat it, so I just peeled back the plastic wrap and bit off a hunk. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One of the house specialties at Sao Lao is Nam Khao: crispy Lao fried rice with red curry paste, coconut shreds, cilantro, green onions, fried peanuts, and fermented pork. Apparently this dish traditionally includes croquette-like deep-fried rice balls, but here it was more Bobby Flay-style chunks of crispy rice bits. I wasn't complaining about that, as this was something of a revelation texturally, but unfortunately the flavor did not quite meet that level. The red curry paste was subtle at best, and the scarce strands of sour pork required a bit of a Where's Waldo? (after a quick Google to see whether that title includes question mark, I just learned that it is called Where's Wally? outside of North America, and I am now shook... like why change it? So weird.) game to locate, though they were tasty if you could find one. Not bad, but as often was the case here, I was left wanting more.
I was most excited about the Lao Style Papaya Salad, which included shredded green papaya, Thai chili peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and Thai green eggplant. It was expressly noted on the menu that this was "not Thai style", which got me wondering what the difference was. Apparently the main differentiator is that Thai papaya salad (som tum) uses fish sauce as the "dressing", whereas the Laotian version (tham mak hoong) instead features the aforementioned padaek fermented fish paste. Unfortunately, despite that lovely-sounding ingredient, this lacked the pungency and funk that I crave in a papaya salad. It was also not spicy enough. The best examples of this dish absolutely melt your face off, and despite assuring the waitress that we wanted the fieriest level, it was nothing of the sort, outside of a bit of lingering heat on the back end. She did glance somewhat insultingly at my ghostly complexion when we ordered, so maybe she thought I couldn't handle it and sent out the white boy special instead. Sad. One positive thing about all the dishes here is the presentation: the colors really pop, with the omnipresent green lettuce garnish providing a striking contrast against the rustic red-brown plates. So there's that.
Something of a mixed bag here, with one very strong dish and a handful of decent-to-underwhelming others. There were a couple of more menu items that sounded interesting, so maybe it was more of an ordering user error, though at least the Nam Khao had a lot of hype. After eating here, I think I've reached an answer to the question posed in the intro: Lao food is like Thai food... but just a little bit less good.
RANKING UPDATE: So here's the deal. This was not the best experience I've had, but it didn't suck, and that's honestly enough to crack my Houston Restaurant Guide in its relatively uncompetitive category, the now-expanded Best Thai/Lao/Malaysian (I already had to combine the other two to get to five entries, and the fifth was a place I'd only been to once over a decade ago). Therefore, we are slotting in Sao Lao at #5 on that list for now, though I would love to see it replaced by somewhere better soon. Hit me up if you have any suggestions.
NEXT UP: One of my biggest reviews of the year, of the best restaurant in Houston.