The loss of Koreatown as a home base on our trips to Los Angeles—now that my mother-in-law has moved to Seal Beach—has not meant only the loss of the excellent Korean restaurants that used to be all around us—to say nothing of fantastic Korean markets. It has also meant the loss of easy access to Thai Town. Usually we’d be 20 minutes away from the main drag on Hollywood Boulevard; now we don’t really know where to go for good Thai food in the South Bay or Orange County. But we did manage one good Thai meal on this trip. On a day that promised rain we decided to take the boys to the Petersen Automotive Museum which meant we were within easy range of one of our favourite Thai restaurants, Luv2Eat Thai Bistro—which is located quite a bit west of Thai Town proper on Sunset Boulevard but is up there with the best of Thai Town in our estimation. Here’s how it went.

[Reports on our previous meals at Luv2Eat here and here.]

Luv2Eat has outdoor seating under the overhang outside the front but on account of the impending rain it had not been set out that day. As we’d arrived right after opening it was quite empty inside and as they were stringently checking proof of vaccination we decided to give it a go. We were seated at one of the tables right in the front and we were all alone in that section of the restaurant for most of our meal. The larger dining room inside began to fill up not too long after we got there and vaccine requirement or no we were glad we were not sitting there.

To the food. Once again we got the massaman curry which we had very fond memories of from our first visit. It wasn’t quite as good this time as we remembered it—it seemed to have much more coconut milk—but it was still very good indeed. Other than that we stuck to dishes from the Chef’s Special section in the front of the menu.Two repeats: the jade noodles with bbq pork, crispy pork and roast duck, which we liked even more this time than I think we had on the previous occasion; and the moo ping or grilled pork skewers which were just dynamite yet again. Two first-time orders: kua gling or meat (in this case ground beef) stir-fried with turmeric curry paste with sator beans (an optional addition); and pad ka pi or stir-fried shrimp paste, lemon grass, lime leaves etc. with protein of choice (we went with crispy pork). Both were rather excellent as well. Some regular and some sticky rice to go with it all. And one of the boys had the pink milk which seemed to be in the strawberry milkshake family.

My only complaint is with heat levels. We were asked how hot we wanted the hot dishes to be on a scale of 1-10. Based on past experience of how hot the very hot dishes can be we went with 7/10 which our server told us was still pretty hot. But nothing was in fact very hot and when the check arrived all those dishes were marked “medium”. I guess next time we’ll ask for things to be “hot” and hope for the best.

For a look at the restaurant and what we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

With tax and tip this came to just about $120. We generated a lot of leftovers—portions are large—and it’s fair to say that five to six adults could probably have made a decent meal of all this. So about $20-24/head or a screaming deal for the quality either way.

What’s next on the restaurant front? I only have two reports left from Los Angeles and should be done with those by the middle of February. As this Tuesday is the first of the month I won’t have a Twin Cities restaurant report this week. I expect we’ll be up to St. Paul to pick up some Thai food next weekend though so you should expect another Thai meal report in another 10 days.