THERE ARE SOME perfect dishes in this world. Spaghetti with red sauce. Chocolate cake. A BLT in the summer. Hot, crispy French fries. The salad rolls from Phinney Ridge restaurant Thaiku.

Seriously! I have eaten a lot of salad rolls from a lot of restaurants, but I am firm in my belief that these are the best in Seattle, especially during the summer months, when you can’t even think about turning on a single burner on your stove.

Salad rolls — also called summer rolls or fresh spring rolls — are comprised of a rice paper wrapper (dipped in warm water to rehydrate before wrapping) around a pile of toppings that can include lettuce, vermicelli noodles, raw vegetables, herbs and tofu or shrimp. There’s always a dipping sauce (usually peanut). The dish has roots in China and was adapted in Vietnam before making its way to Thailand.

There are dozens of ingredient combinations to choose from when making a salad roll. The goal is a tight, neatly wrapped masterpiece containing a multitude of textures and flavors that produce a harmonious bite. But a roll past its prime, where the rice paper is (gasp!) gummy or brittle? The ratio of noodles to vegetables is way off? The tofu is tasteless, or the shrimp smells wrong? The peanut sauce is a gloopy, heavy mess? It’s like listening to a bad cover band. The potential is there, but the delivery stinks.

There are a few things that make the rolls at Thaiku superior to others. First: no noodles taking up valuable real estate. Instead, there is a mixture of green leaf lettuce, carrots, red cabbage, jicama, and slices of tofu pan-fried with lemongrass and vegetarian oyster sauce. The crisp vegetables meld perfectly with the smooth tofu. Jicama provides a juicy crunch like cucumber, but with a more consistently satisfying bite. There is no mushiness, nothing overtly creamy. (I love you, avocado, but you have no place in a salad roll.) Each roll is topped with a sprinkle of crispy fried shallots, adding a perfect, almost bitter crunch at the end of each bite.

And forget about peanut sauce as a dip.

“Peanut can be so heavy and filling, like you’re dipping into a peanut curry,” says Mon Sonthayanavin, general manager at Thaiku since 2020, during a recent phone call.

The sauce is the icing on the cake when it comes to the Thaiku salad roll. Listed as a cilantro aioli, it has a much thinner consistency, mixing fresh cilantro with garlic, Thai chiles, lime juice, fish sauce, mayo and palm sugar syrup. It’s slightly creamy, super-herby and has a top note of funk from the fish sauce. This sauce should not be limited to salad rolls — you should be dipping grilled chicken skewers into it and pouring it over big bowls of tossed salad. I would forget about ranch this summer and replace it with this — for pizza, chicken wings, honestly anything.

Sonthayanavin says Thaiku hasn’t always had a summer roll on the menu — the restaurant had its origins in Fremont as the Fremont Noodle House before reinventing in Ballard as Thaiku from 2001-11 before then moving to the current digs next to El Chupacabra a decade ago. It wasn’t until opening in Phinney that chef Unchalee “Oh” Ayucharoen added the dish.

As you might suspect, the rolls are incredibly popular — especially during summer months. And while it’s tempting to just head to Thaiku any time a craving strikes, you can make them at home. It can take a few tries to get the ratios right and the rolling technique down, but the result is worth it.

Thaiku Salad Roll
 Makes 10-12

1 package firm organic tofu
2 large carrots
1 small red cabbage
1 jicama
1-2 stalks lemongrass, chopped
1-2 tablespoons vegetarian oyster sauce
1 package fresh roll wrappers (rice paper)
1 head green leaf lettuce
⅓ cup fried shallots

  1. Cut the tofu into ½-inch strips.
  2. Shred carrots, red cabbage and jicama.
  3. Quickly pan-fry the tofu (around 3 minutes on each side) with the chopped lemongrass and vegetarian oyster sauce.
  4. Soak fresh roll wrappers in warm water (follow instructions on the package). Lay out the fresh roll wrappers, and let sit for about 30 seconds.
  5. Assemble by using 1 or 2 wrappers per roll (depending on your skill at rolling without breaking them). For each salad roll, add 2 big leaves of lettuce, about ¼ cup each of the shredded veggies and 1 tofu strip.
  6. Gently roll, sprinkle with fried shallots and serve with Cilantro Aioli for dipping.

Salad Roll Sauce (Cilantro Aioli)
1 cup fresh cilantro
½ cup peeled garlic cloves
1-2 Thai chili peppers
½ cup lime juice
½ cup fish sauce
2 ounces palm sugar syrup
1 cup mayonnaise

Blend all ingredients except mayonnaise until fairly smooth (like the consistency of pesto sauce), then stir in the mayo until fully combined.

Jackie Varriano covers the food scene in the neighborhoods around Seattle. She loves digging into stories that discuss why we eat the things we do — and when — in our region and beyond. Reach her at jvarriano@seattletimes.com. On Twitter: @JackieVarriano.