Maomao Restaurant

You’re in for a good time the moment you make your way down the stairs into the subterranean level of Mao Mao, a Thai restaurant in Bushwick. You might even have the urge to throw your hands up in the air from one of the theater-style seats and start dancing. The combination of twinkly lights, vintage Coke and Pepsi signs, and Thai movie posters will do that to a person. The cavernous space is also decorated with a big projector screen playing boxing clips, and a glowing red wall covered in glass pitchers of ya dong, the fermented liquor that Mao Mao specializes in. Come here with a few friends, work your way through something from every page of the menu (our favorite dish of the night was the khao mun gai), and plan to linger over Thai beers and tastes of different kinds of ya dong. This is the kind of place that will make you briefly, blissfully forget just how much time you spent in your own apartment over the last year.