We have eaten at Kolae five times now and it has been a flavour explosion on every one of them, which is not a thing we can say about anywhere else in Borough. It is also the only restaurant on this street where the best dish costs six pounds.
It opened at the end of 2023 across three floors of a former cheese shop on Park Street, from Mark Dobbie and Andy Oliver, the pair behind Som Saa. The cooking is southern Thai and it is built on fire: meat and fish coated in a coconut curry marinade and grilled over flame. It took a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2025, kept it in 2026, and came thirty-third in the National Restaurant Awards.
The £6 order
The kolae chicken is the dish the restaurant is named for: a bamboo skewer, coconut curry marinade, hard over the flame, £6 each. Order two per person and do not feel bad about it. The grilled mussel skewers are also £6 and the hogget chop is £8, which makes the grill section the best-value cooking in Borough Market by a distance.
And the thing nobody tells you to order
The biryani rice crackers. They arrive stacked up in a stone bowl under fried shallots and coriander and they are the best texture on any menu in this postcode, built to be broken apart with your hands rather than admired. Get them. Then the southern gati curry of minced prawn and betel leaf at £16.50 if you want something with a sauce to it.
Southern Thai, which is not the Thai you know
Most Thai food in Britain comes filtered through Bangkok and central Thailand. Southern Thai is a different proposition: hotter, more sour, heavier on coconut, turmeric and fermented fish, and far more interested in the grill. Dobbie and Oliver built Som Saa on exactly this kind of specificity, and Kolae narrows it further to one region and one technique.
What that means in practice is that nothing here tastes like a green curry from your local. The marinades are thicker and darker, the heat arrives later and stays longer, and the sour notes do more work than the sweet ones. If you are bringing someone who thinks they do not like Thai food, this is the place to test the theory.
Ask for upstairs
This is the piece of advice that changes the meal. Three floors means three quite different rooms, and the upstairs one is more spacious and a good deal quieter than the ground floor, which runs loud and tight. Ask when you book. It is the difference between a dinner you can talk through and one you shout through.
You can eat extremely well here for under £50 a head. Bookings are taken for up to six and walk-ins are first come, first served, so a party of two on a weekday has a decent chance of getting in on spec.
The London x London Take: five visits, five very good dinners, and the rare restaurant that has got better rather than coasted after the award. The skewers are the best six pounds you can spend in Borough, the biryani rice crackers are the most interesting thing we have eaten round here this year, and asking for the upstairs room turns a good meal into a proper evening. This is the one we send people to when they have one dinner in this postcode and do not want to spend a hundred pounds on it.
Rating: 5/5
Need to know
- Address: 6 Park Street, London SE1 9AB
- Nearest station: London Bridge, four minutes
- Website: kolae.com
- Booking: bookable for up to six, walk-ins first come first served. Ask for a table upstairs
- Price: skewers from £6, curries around £16.50, under £50 a head
- Visited: five times
More in the area in our guides to Borough Market restaurants and London Bridge restaurants, and the stalls themselves in our Borough Market guide. More of the same cooking across town in our guide to the best Thai restaurants in London.
“Five visits and a flavour explosion every time. Ask for a table upstairs, where it is more spacious and a good deal quieter.”
