Habrae restaurant, 7230 Madison St. in Forest Park, opened four years ago with the intention to feature desserts from Thailand. Owners Jumpol Prasitporn and Ussamee Sanmueanqchin live in Berwyn but are originally from Bangkok.
They named their business by combining two words, hab and rae, which reference how street vendors carry food in Thailand.
“We carry food in the basket. The basket is called ‘hab.’ And ‘re’ means travel,” Sanmueanqchin said. “So it’s like me put everything from Thailand in the basket and carry to you guys.”
The desserts immediately generated interest with vibrant colors, unique textures and balance of sweet, salty and sometimes sour flavors.
“The desserts are very unique for the typical American palate,” said Oak Parker Russell Jaffe.
“People in this area not familiar with the Thai dessert that much,” Prasitporn said. “So we add more food. We keep increasing the menu.”
On the first of several trips to the restaurant, Jaffe and his family picked savory dishes that they recognized from other Thai menus.
“Usually if I get Thai food, I get penang curry, which by the way Habrae’s penang curry is insanely good,” Jaffe said. “I started with that. Then I wanted to try something different. Kaeng Kua? This sounds good. Pork belly curry. I love pork. Who doesn’t love pork belly?”
The dish is a specialty, made when the chef can get her hands on fresh betel leaves, which have a warm, peppery, but slightly bitter taste – something similar to arugula. “Thai food have a lot of ingredients and very complicated,” Sanmueanqchin said. “Like chili, like a ginger. And for the paste, have a lot of herbs in there. And shrimp paste and fish sauce and palm sugar. Palm sugar is different from the taste of regular sugar. You will get like a smooth – not too sweet. And coconut milk. I love the curry so much, like a coconut curry.”
Kaeng Kua is a traditional curry dish.
“We try to use the original ingredient,” Prasitporn said. “If you go to Thailand, you’re going to have the same taste.”
“It is perfect for the customer who can handle spicy and love the coconut curry flavor, but it’s not too hot. The texture is chewy and you will get a little bit sweet taste in there too,” Sanmueanqchin said.
The owners noted that other diners have balked at the smell of fish sauce. But for Russell Jaffe it was just the sort of culinary adventure he was looking for.
“It is very strong and very pungent. It’s very fishy. Spoiler alert, it’s from a fish! This is a dish where you can taste that ingredient, but it still is sweet, flavorful, I mean, it’s just so good. And it’s sweet; it’s sour; it’s spicy. This is a recipe, like, baby’s first fish sauce.”
Upstairs from Habrae, the couple has another restaurant concept going. Happy Izakaya opened in the past month serving sushi and other Japanese dishes in a festive, lantern-filled space. It fills a culinary gap on Madison Street.
Coming to the end, we find ourselves where we started: with dessert. Jaffe says he has tried several, but the sweet plus salty ones are his favorite, especially the salted egg croissant.
“It’s very unique. It is very sweet and it is very, very salty. I’ve never had anything like this. I loved it,” Jaffe said.
Get in on the flavor
