Pai Northern Thai Kitchen opened in 2014 in a basement room at 18 Duncan Street. Chefs Nuit Regular and Jeff Regular named it after Pai, Thailand, and built the menu around northern plates Toronto did not already have on repeat: khao soi, hunglay, pad gra prow, plus the pad thai that still moves the most bowls.

Michelin calls the room perpetually busy. The Star’s Amy Pataki, in the first year, said fun was as much the guiding principle as the food. The downtown shop still runs mostly on a line at the door. A second eat-in room later opened uptown at Yonge and Eglinton.

We have no public plate photograph we can save from the official site or Wikimedia. The picture is the tower next door at 19 Duncan — the block, not a bowl. The chair is still the northern Thai room downstairs.