Despite being upscale, the portions served at Keo can serve the hungriest patron, and the options available are nothing short of delicious.
Keo bills itself as a Thai restaurant, although a variety of cultures find their way into their dishes. The restaurant, which has two locations in the city, is a moderately upscale restaurant — somewhere you might take a nice date or for a night out on the town with besties, not necessarily just a place for a Thursday night.
The menu at Keo is the perfect size, with enough variety without having an overwhelming number of choices. There are several options for fish, both raw and cooked, while also chicken, vegetarian and beef dishes abounding. The food comes from an assortment of areas. There are Malaysian style fried rice, Korean bibimbap and Cambodia stir fry. Two different burgers also find themselves on the menu. Entree prices range from $10, for a burger, to $19, for red curry udon. The dessert list is small but equally good, with a cheesecake and chocolate mousse, and the alcohol list was just as large as the rest of the menu, with a wide variety of sakes and mixed drinks.
To start off the night, a friend and I tried the tuna nachos. We expected cooked tuna on top a bed of wonton nachos, but instead got raw ahi tuna; this twist made them even better, as the smooth raw fish complemented the crunch of the chips nicely. The wonton chips themselves were amazing, with a lighter texture than tortilla chips, and the hoisin sauce gave the dish a touch of sweetness that made it delicious.
For the main meal, I got the Vietnamese crepe with chicken, while another got the Korean bibimbap. The crepe was thin, folded over with ground chicken and sauce inside, with a side of salad. The sauce inside the crepe was amazing. It was slightly sweet, but mostly savory, and the chicken was perfectly moist. The crepe itself was a thin, interesting thing, with a hint of spice at the end. The bibimbap had a lot of flavor and a kick of spice but looked beautiful presentation-wise. The sunny-side up egg melded the rest of the ingredients together well.
As an end to the night, we had the banana wonton dessert. Caramelized bananas were folded into tiny cigar-shaped wontons, surrounding a pile of homemade vanilla ice cream, covered in caramel sauce. The disappointing part of it all was there was only four wonton pieces; I would’ve preferred mostly wontons and little ice cream, as the latter’s much easier to obtain. The banana pieces were amazing — the wonton went from crunchy to soft and sweet in the middle and, when dipped in the ice cream, softened well. The ice cream was much better than vanilla soft serve; you could see the vanilla bean flecks.
Overall, Keo has a lot of options for a nice dinner out on the town. The dishes all are reasonably sized, though you may be able to bring some food home and certainly won’t be hungry. It’s a little on the more-expensive side of Tulsa food, but it offers a different spin on cuisine and doesn’t have the greasy feel of cheap Asian takeout.
