It was around 2009, Akkapong “Earl” Ninsom thinks, that he first experienced Northern Thai–style larb. It wasn’t in Chiang Mai, or any other city in Thailand, but on the corner of SE 32nd and Division, at Andy Ricker’s charmingly wonky house: Pok Pok. Instead of the fresh and vibrant ground meat salad with mint and lime he ate growing up in Bangkok, the style most familiar to American diners, this one was dark and unctuous, with no lime to brighten it. “I sent it back,” he says, presuming the kitchen had made a mistake. When it came back unchanged, still redolent of warm, dry spices and no lime or mint, he wasn’t mad but inspired: Here was a stateside restaurant unwilling to compromise for Western palates, which is exactly what Ninsom himself would go on to do at Langbaan and Padee, then Hat Yai, Eem, Phuket Cafe, Yaowarat.  

Starting January 23, a similar larb will hit tables in the same dining room. Coincidentally, Ninsom’s server that evening way back when was Eric Nelson, who, after establishing himself as a renowned bartender, would later partner with Ninsom at Eem and then Yaowarat. News broke in July that, alongside Sam Smith (executive chef at Yaowarat), the group is opening a Thai restaurant in the old Pok Pok shack. Would this be a kind of resurrection of the beloved Portland spot, which shuttered in 2020? Not exactly.

It’s called OK Chicken and Khao Soi. The plan is dinner to start, with lunch service and a late-night fried chicken menu down the line. As Hat Yai and Yaowarat focus on a city and neighborhood, respectively, this newest spot looks to the north of Thailand, specifically to Chiang Mai. The team spent a chunk of 2025 in Chiang Mai sampling every local dish they could find: khao soi, the coconut milk and curry egg noodle soups; sai oua, a pork sausage scented with galangal and lemongrass; pork and beef curries; fried and grilled chicken; and a lot of som tum, the spicy green papaya salads pounded in a Thai mortar and pestle, a.k.a. a “pok pok.”

As the name would suggest (it’s a working title that stuck, inspired by a sign the group spotted in Thailand), OK Chicken and Khao Soi is all about the khao soi. After tasting through an unfathomable amount of rich curry noodle soups in Thailand—Smith describes a food coma he had to sleep off for an entire day—the team found their favorite in the Hmong village Doi Pui, at the restaurant Khao Soi Loong Surin. This variation of the often brothy soup eats more like a thick curry coating the egg noodles. They’re serving it with either beef, chicken, or tofu and the classic pickled mustard greens with a lot of chiles.

As the name would also suggest, there’s a lot of chicken, including fried quarters (leg and thigh, marinated in oyster sauce), and wings. Those hoping for a Pok Pok revival may be be disappointed—at first. “That’s the most common question we get: ‘Are you going to do the [Pok Pok] wings?’” Smith says. They’re not. After all, those wings were Vietnamese, despite coming from the most famous Thai restaurant in Portland at the time. “We tell people, ‘We’re doing Thai food,’” Nelson adds. These marinated, double-fried wings get a “ton of fresh turmeric” and a side of nam jim seafood, a classic Thai dipping sauce, made here with galangal, lemongrass, garlic, cilantro, and fish sauce. “The wings are unlike anything I’ve had here in Portland,” Nelson says. “Everyone’s going to get the wings.”  

They’re also making use of Pok Pok’s room-size charcoal grill, cranking out smoky half chickens served with spicy tamarind and sweet chile sauces and pork belly and shoulder, as well as sai oua, a turmeric-packed sausage.

Committed as the restaurant is to Chiang Mai’s cuisine, there’s one dish in particular that the team is less inclined to recreate exactly. Ironically, it’s that Northern Thai larb, which often includes offal, blood, and even cow bile. Some versions are made with raw water buffalo. “The raw versions...would be so intensely bitter,” Smith recalls of eating various larb in Chiang Mai. “I think it would be pretty challenging for a lot of people, not just Americans.” At OK Chicken, the larb is a mix of chopped (cooked) pork and pork blood, “northern spices” (nutmeg, clove, ginger), fresh herbs, fish sauce, and chiles. Crunchy fried onions and more herbs lend texture, and you stuff all that into cabbage-leaf hand rolls.

Papaya salads funky with fish sauce and crab paste, rich Burmese-style pork curry, and a series of zingy nam phrik relishes round out the opening menu. While you can certainly pop by solo for a bowl of khao soi or curry, the hope is for groups to mix and match dishes. “Every dish can stand alone, but everything is best together,” says Smith. “On a table you want a papaya salad, one of the nam phriks, some grilled meat, larb, and then sticky rice. Everything goes with sticky rice.” That means dessert, too, where it’s served with salted coconut milk, sweet longan fruit, and coconut or tamarind ice cream.

Instead of pandan old-fashioneds or tamarind daiquiris, as a sober bartender, Nelson developed a cocktail menu based on the fruit juices, teas, and smoothies he drank in Thailand. There are no shaker tins, no mixing glasses, no fancy ice program. Instead, the bar has blenders and machines churning aguas frescas and slushies. Drinks like apple and salted plum smoothies, Thai tea smoothies with coconut and coffee jelly, watermelon agua fresca, and herbal tea slushies offer suggested spirits, if you want to turn them boozy, but they’re built to drink just as well sans alcohol.

There won’t be any Pok Pok drinking vinegar, either. Yet for any devoted Pok Pok acolyte, it will be hard not to think of the old days when reentering the multi-chambered restaurant. Much of it remains. The bar cobbled from sushi boxes and the rambling, indoor-outdoor dining rooms are intact. Several former Pok Pok employees are even joining Nelson in returning to the space. Ricker’s James Beard Award still hangs in the hall, too. But this is not Pok Pok, and it’s not trying to be, even if its legacy lingers in dishes like that Northern-style larb Ninsom sent back more than 15 years ago.