FOOD

MaKiin’s brunch is built around a simple but important distinction: the appetizers are the all-you-can-eat portion. For $49, the meal begins with repeat trips through a curated buffet spread of Thai small plates, then narrows to one hot entrée prepared to order, with two mimosas included. The exact appetizer rotation can change, so this is less a fixed buffet map than a chance to work repeatedly through the restaurant’s most playful category of food.

The brunch has included papaya salad and coconut chicken soup, two dishes that immediately make the meal feel specifically Thai. Green papaya salad, or som tum, is built from crisp unripe papaya rather than sweet ripe fruit, usually balancing crunch against chile, lime and a savory-sweet dressing. The coconut chicken soup is tom kha: coconut milk with chicken and mushrooms, sharpened by galangal, the citrusy, peppery rhizome that gives the soup its unmistakable aromatic edge.

Corn fritters move in the opposite direction: hot, crisp and easy to keep reaching for. MaKiin has served them in a red-curry tempura style, putting Thai curry paste into the fried-snack vocabulary. Thai-Kick Chicken is more substantial, with marinated grilled chicken, spicy Thai mignonette and sweet Sriracha over fresh pineapple. It is a useful example of how the appetizer course can move between heat, sweetness, acid and smoke without becoming a parade of fried beige bites.

The broader appetizer menu explains why an unlimited format fits MaKiin so well. Gui chai tod becomes Chives Cake Sunrise: crisp Thai chive cakes with a sunny-side-up quail egg and sweet chile sauce. Curry Carnival pairs roti with Panang, turmeric and Massaman curries, turning bread into a three-sauce tasting. Savory Cones wrap vegetables and tofu with tamarind, soy, turmeric and curry spices, while Silken Calamari Soiree combines squid, salt-cured egg yolk and black caviar. These are not guaranteed on every brunch rotation, but they show how specific the small-plate program can become.

The entrée is deliberately the controlled part of the meal: one hot main rather than unlimited mains. Earlier brunch lineups included Curry Crab and Filet Mignon & Eggs, showing that the choice can move between Thai flavors and brunch-specific creations. By the time it arrives, the appetizer course may already have done most of the work, which makes the main feel more like a composed capstone than the beginning of another round.

Dessert is outside the AYCE package, but one finale is too distinctive to ignore. Dessert Wonderland is a separate $22 order built as an edible tree of life: chocolate soil, lychee-rosewater sorbet, mango and raspberry gels, edible moss, a dark-chocolate tree and cotton-candy clouds. The presentation takes roughly 15 to 20 minutes to construct. It is less a conventional plated sweet than table theater, visually belonging to the same world as the gold doors, jewel-toned room and elaborate brunch.

The appeal of MaKiin’s brunch is therefore not that everything is unlimited. It is that the unlimited part is placed exactly where the restaurant has the most room to surprise: snacks, salads, soups and small composed bites that can keep changing the direction of the meal. One entrée provides structure; the optional dessert tree provides the spectacle. Between them sits an appetizer course with no fixed ceiling, which is a very MaKiin way to do all-you-can-eat.