In July we ate at our (and everyone else’s) favourite bastion of southern Thai cooking in the US, Jitlada, and also at the less ambitious (and expensive) Yai. This time around we decided to eat at a couple of places in Thai Town we hadn’t been to before and settled on Red Corner Asia and Pailin Thai. Red Corner Asia is officially within Thai Town (whose western boundary is Western Ave.) and Pailin Thai is a few blocks further west but I think we can all agree that it can only be a good thing if Thai Town grows and colonizes more of Hollywood. Let’s take the meals in chronological order:

Red Corner Asia has the prime location in a small strip mall dominated by restaurants (there are four other Thai restaurants there, three of which are the well-regarded Ruen Pair, Ganda and Crispy Pork Gang & Grill). Despite its name, which might lead you to expect a pan-Asian menu, it’s very much a Thai restaurant. It has a glitzier interior than most Thai Town places and the menu too is shinier and seems to feature, alongside traditional dishes, more contemporary preparations than you’d see at most places. We were eating early but there were more people there than the photograph I took suggests–our end of the restaurant was pretty much full.

What we ate:

Crispy Duck Larb: We were intrigued to see what larb with duck would be like, and I can report that while it’s good here I much prefer it with beef or pork. The duck was not particularly ducky and I wished I was eating the beef/tripe larb at Yai instead.

Tamarind Soup with Vegetables and Shrimp: This is very much a soup with vegetables than with shrimp and of the things floating in the soup the cauliflower is dominant. It also tastes more like a sour tomato soup than like what I’d expected tamarind soup to taste like (darker sweet/sour notes, I guess). This was our least favourite dish

Stuffed Chicken Wings with Panang Curry Sauce: This was very good; not so much for the wings (stuffed with noodles etc., battered and fried to a crisp) but for the curry sauce which was thick and heavily redolent of crushed peanuts. Beneath the peanuts were the tangy flavours of lime leaf and lemongrass and a nice but not overpowering bite. Next time I’d ditch the chicken wings and just get a panang curry with pork instead.

Crispy, Spicy Catfish: Very similar to the version we had at Yai on our first meal there and much more artfully presented. Somehow just not quite as good though–tough to say why.

All of this came to $60 with tax and tip.

A different soup might have done wonders, who knows, but while the meal was quite good, on the whole, it was nothing special. I want to stress that this estimation is not on account of its glitzier presentation or the more nouveau aspects of some of the menu: my favourite thing at the meal was probably the least traditional thing we ate. It’s just that while everything was good, everything was quite familiar. Still, if this were in the Twin Cities it would be the best Thai restaurant in town. But there are better, less heralded options in Thai Town. Such as, for example, the restaurant we ate at yesterday: Pailin Thai.

Pailin Thai is an unassuming and small space, but a pleasant one (none of the lunch counter at a factory feel of Yai). Their reputation is based on their repertoire of dishes from northern Thailand, near the border with Myanmar and so we decided to focus on a smaller part of the menu that lists some of their special dishes from the region. The owner (at least I assume he is the owner) is a very warm and engaging man and very glad to help explain dishes and steer you away from unbalanced orders, as he did for us.

The northern style sausages are made in house and are bloody good (no actual blood in them though, I don’t think). The contents include curry paste and some starchy element and so they’re not overwhelmingly meaty.

Kao Soy is the northern Thai version of a rich noodle/soup with coconut cream from Myanmar (apropos of nothing there was a bit of a Kao Soy/Khao Sway craze in Delhi about a decade ago). It’s quite reminiscent of the Malaysian Laksa in some ways and was really quite excellent. Despite the use of coconut cream it was not cloying in the slightest and the flavours were were perfectly balanced. The chicken that’s in there is really an afterthought.

Nam Ngeao also features rice noodles (though thinner tubular noodles unlike the broader flat noodles in the Kao Soy) floating in a tangy and spicy soupy red curry; this is made without coconut cream/milk. We got it with sliced pork ribs but there were also lots of cubes of congealed pig blood floating in it. This may or may not sound appealing, but if not, imagine far less gamy and chewy chunks of liver and you’re pretty much there. This was also very, very good. More acidic and tangy than the Kao Soy and a bit spicier too.

Cube of Pig Blood

We were given a plate of condiments to add to the two noodle/soup dishes, with the constraint that the bean sprouts only go on the Nam Ngeao. These included pickled cabbage which was particularly nice in the Kao Soy.

The soft shell crabs can be made in a number of ways but he recommended getting them spicy with fried mint leaves. We were happy to comply but while it was very good we preferred everything else to it. (This is not on the printed menu, by the way. It was recommended by the owner instead of the Kang Leang that we’d ordered blind; he told us that it was also a noodle/soup dish and we already had two in the Kao Soy and the Nam Ngeao.)

All of this came to $48 with a generous tip, and we brought leftovers home for another meal. An incredibly good deal for excellent food. I think Pailin Thai beats Yai to second place in our estimations behind Jitlada (who are now far more expensive as I noted in my review last month). We look forward to coming back a couple more times when we’re in L.A next and exploring more of their specials and their regular menu.

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A postscript: I got to Pailin Thai–which does not have the buzz of most Thai Town favourites–via SinoSoul, the blog of the combative Tony Chen, a prominent and prickly fixture on the L.A foodie scene. Chen’s style is gonzo–his blog is bigger on attitude than editing–and I think he’d be the first to acknowledge that he’s a bit of a dick. Of course, I am more than a bit of a dick too, but I find some aspects of his presentation a little hard to take. However, I think his attitude is conditioned by the fact that he sets himself up as an alternative to a far, far more influential and revered local luminary, Jonathan Gold (the Pulitzer winning food writer who became famous at the LA Weekly and moved more recently to the LA Times). Gold’s reputation rests on his championing of “ethnic” food in L.A at a time when there was no other mainstream reporting of it, and I think there’s an interesting tension now between him and some of the Asian/American bloggers who’ve emerged in the last few years and who cover much of his old beat. I myself have many issues with Gold and have had them for a very long time. I think I might revisit some of that stuff sometime soon on this blog.