nam fah - oslo, norway

Rating:  7 / 10

Thai food is incredibly difficult to get in Oslo. Authentic Thai, I should clarify. Generally the consensus is to make food that reminds Norwegians of their 2 weeks in Phuket, and therefore has absolutely nothing to do with real food the way Thai people eat it. They have been duped into thinking the green curry they had at "Ting Tong Bar" was the real deal. I hate to break it to you, it wasn't.

First off, the Thai in Oslo is bland as hell. Not only talking about the spice levels, but overall flavours. Nobody goes hard on fish sauce or fermented shrimp paste or galangal or lime leaves or chilli. Everything is just a dull coloured curry where 90% of it is coconut milk, a tiny pinch of store-bought curry paste and some dry chicken or frozen shrimp. 

Nam Fah veers from this path, only slightly.

I've eaten many dishes here and there are definitely some highlights and some worth skipping. The red curry with shrimp (I asked for thai-spicy) was a pretty good uptick from regular Norg-Thai. It had some spice, some fresh bright flavours and the shrimp were plump and tasty.

My chicken Panang was a bit of a detour. The chicken pieces were dry and chewy and obviously prepped hours before the kitchen opened. The sauce was quite muted even tho I asked, again, for it to be thai-spicy. There was almost no heat in it and the flavours became muddled and muddy.

In a slight return to form, the green curry was adequately spicy, finally. It had the right flavours and the chicken was a bit more moist (this was a previous visit). 

If you are dying for some real Thai food in Oslo, ironically i'd send you to Prik, but if you don't want to go all the way to Via Village, then Nam Fah is about as good as you'll get in Oslo if you don't want the boring bland crap most other places churn out.

These recommendations are just personal opinions based on my palate, things change, chefs get fired or replaced, places open-close, relocate, so take it all with a pinch of MSG  and discover your own gems too. But please do try a few of these, they have been researched exhaustively.