Though I am currently in Delhi I still have a couple of Los Angeles meal reports in hand and so I’m going to sandwich them around another Delhi report this week before turning to Delhi and then Hong Kong reports in the next couple of weeks. First up is a brief writeup of two meals at Lacha Somtum, eaten a few months apart. The first one was eaten last summer but by the time I got around to starting to write it up it was so far in the rear-view mirror that I decided to wait till the next trip to eat there again and post on more of the menu. That time is now. There were just the two of us at the first meal (a lunch), and we kept it light on account of needing to board a flight very soon after; at the second meal (a dinner) we were joined by Sku and family and we got a lot more stuff. Both meals were quite good. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Thai Cuisine
Luv2Eat Thai Bistro (Los Angeles, Winter 2015-16)
As I’ve noted on multiple occasions, Los Angeles almost certainly has the best Thai food in the United States. Las Vegas may have Lotus of Siam and Portland may have Pok Pok, but Los Angeles has Thai Town with its seemingly endless series of holes in the wall on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. Yes, LA has seen a couple of trendier places open in the last year or so in Night+Market (and it’s spinoff, Song) and more recently two outposts of Andy Ricker’s burgeoning Pok Pok empire (which have failed to set the town on fire so far), but it’s to old Thai Town you must go to experience the breadth of what LA has to offer. From Jitlada‘s legendary and expansive southern Thai menu to more abbreviated regional proffers at Pailin or Lacha Somtum, from boat noodles at Sapp to Muslim dishes at Kruang Tedd, Thai Town has enough to keep both the specialist and the generalist happy. Continue reading
Taste of Thai Yai (Apple Valley, MN)
When I first started reviewing Twin Cities restaurants a snarky friend who lives on a coast cracked that it wouldn’t be long before I’d find myself reviewing marginal places in the suburbs. Well, fuck you, man, that’s not what’s happening here. There are still plenty of places in the Twin Cities I’m interested in reviewing; it’s just that I want to take a wider look at the Asian food scene here, especially the places a bit closer to us. I’m on record as saying that On’s Kitchen and Bangkok Thai Deli are the only Thai places in the area worth talking about but if we can find at least a couple of places within easier reach that aren’t totally heinous then that’s something. Well, I guess this might be it. Sort of. What we ate ranged from the unacceptable to the just about acceptable, but more was in the acceptable end of the spectrum than I feared would be the case when friends invited us to join us there this past weekend. Continue reading
Bangkok Thai Deli III
Following my mega Grand Szechuan round-up from last week, here is a report on a collection of meals eaten at Bangkok Thai Deli at various points in 2015 as well. In the past I’ve described Bangkok Thai Deli as being alongside On’s Kitchen at the top of the Twin Cities’ somewhat meager Thai scene. Based on our meals this year, I am sorry to say that I think it has dropped quite clearly to the second position. While we’ve eaten some very tasty things there, there’s been a lot of inconsistency and even some meals that were somewhat blah on the whole. We’ve still eaten there more than at On’s because we only get up to the Cities on the weekends and On’s is closed on Sundays, which puts it at a bit of a disadvantage vis a vis our wallets. As with my last Grand Szechuan post, what follows is a slideshow, with descriptions, of dishes that were (mostly) not reported on in my previous reviews (here and here).
Isaan Station Again (Los Angeles, July 2015)
I ate at Isaan Station twice on our last trip to Los Angeles. On neither occasion was I accompanied by the missus and kids and I was thus resolved that we would go back together on this trip (it also helps that Isaan Station is in Koreatown and not Thai Town). While they do not have the dish that the boys are guaranteed to eat (chicken/pork satays) I knew they (and the missus) would love their wondrous grilled chicken and/or any of the other grilled meats; and that the missus would, at a minimum, also love whichever earthy, spicy soup we got. So it proved to be.
Continue reading
On’s Kitchen II
No, On’s Kitchen hasn’t opened a second location: this is my second review of On’s Kitchen. It’s not the only time we’ve eaten there since the first review, it’s only the second review I’ve gotten around to writing; and, in fact, it’s a compendium of our two most recent meals there. In the time since the first review—way back in late 2013 when I’d first started to post restaurant write-ups on the blog—I’ve covered a number of the other Thai places that get attention from Twin Cities foodies and food media and have confirmed what everyone knows to be true: at the top are On’s Kitchen and Bangkok Thai Deli and everyone else is well below that. What not everyone wants to say, however, is that even the better places below them are not even really in the same weight division. But rather than dwell on the shortcomings of the rest of the scene, I’ll note once again how lucky we are, in a region without a large Thai population, to have two Thai restaurants that offer up very good renditions of more than your standard-issue Thai restaurant fare, and where it is possible to get even the standard-issue fare cooked at a high level and unsweetened or otherwise watered down. Continue reading
Karta Thai
Karta Thai was recommended to me in a Chowhound discussion on Thai Food in the Twin Cities. The proposition advanced by some (and supported by me) and argued by others there was that most Thai restaurants in the area continue to suffer from the “too sweet” malady. My sub-argument was that outside of Bangkok Thai Deli and On’s Kitchen in St. Paul Thai food in the Twin Cities is also pedestrian at best. Since then we’ve eaten at Sen Yai Sen Lek, which I’d put just above pedestrian (though much better than the likes of Supatra). Karta Thai it was suggested was also a dependable place, offering solid execution of a standard menu. As we’re often in the neighbourhood for food shopping, and as solidly executed Thai food is something we’re always happy to eat, we stopped in some weeks ago. Herewith the report. Continue reading
Crispy Pork Gang & Grill + Hoy-Ka (Los Angeles Dec 2014/Jan 2015)
It feels like only yesterday that we returned from our most recent trip to LA. Okay, so it feels like almost two and a half months, which is what it’s been. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get around to finishing up posting write-ups of our meals but this twofer featuring two Thai Town mainstays is the last one. It actually features the first meal we ate out on this trip—at Crispy Pork Gang & Grill. It’s fitting that the last meal report should be of two Thai meals as on this trip it was Thai food that we ate out the most.
Crispy Pork Gang & Grill is part of the mega-cluster of restaurants in the strip mall on Hollywood Blvd. off Harvard (its immediate neighbours include the venerable Ruen Pair, Red Corner Asia and Pa Ord 3) and is the more downmarket of the two. It is open 24 hours, has minimal atmosphere and functional service. The food, however, is pretty good (if not as good as it once was). Their calling card, as you might expect from their name is their crispy pork which can be gotten with a number of dishes, but that’s not all they’re good at. Continue reading
Isaan Station, Twice (Los Angeles, Winter 2014/2015)
Access to great Thai food is one of the culinary highlights of our trips to Los Angeles. And while Thai Town is not the longest hop from our base at my mother-in-law’s place in Koreatown, and while there are so many excellent options to choose from there, it was very good to hear that there was now a Thai restaurant in Koreatown as well that was receiving strong reviews: Isaan Station. I first heard of it from Sku and then saw a number of promising references on Chowhound and elsewhere.
Isaan Station’s menu is focussed, as you might expect from the name, on food from Isaan, the northeastern Thai region abutting Laos and Cambodia. The region’s cuisine is renowned for its heat, pungency and sourness and has more in common with Lao cuisine than with the central Thai cuisine most familiar from restaurants outside Thailand. Well, you could have found out as much for yourselves from a simple Wikipedia lookup—I don’t want to pretend to be an expert for I am not.
Bangkok Thai Deli II (Saint Paul, MN)
After our decent but not particularly special meal at Sen Yai Sen Lek we were left with a hankering for some better Thai food. So when we found ourselves heading to the Children’s Museum in Saint Paul a few Sundays ago we followed that visit with a return to Bangkok Thai Deli for lunch (see here for my writeup of a previous meal there). On’s Kitchen is closed on Sundays or else we would have gone there, but really there’s not so very much separating On’s and Bangkok Thai Deli these days. Well, there is the fact that Bangkok Thai Deli is usually crammed for Sunday lunch which means the likelihood of both a wait and fairly spotty service, both of which we encountered. Continue reading
Sen Yai Sen Lek (Minneapolis)
An ongoing conversation on the MSP Chowhound forum about the disease of sweetness that plagues Twin Cities Thai restaurants reminded me that we had been meaning to eat at Sen Yai Sen Lek for some time now and had not gotten around to it, despite being up in that neighbourhood on a near-weekly basis for our Indian and Korean grocery shopping. Well, as of last weekend that box on our itinerary has been checked.
It was a pleasant meal on the whole, but nothing to get terribly excited about. And certainly nothing to drive through snow to get to as we did. (Though, as my wife noted with resignation, the real reason for the outing, and the endangerment of the entire family on the highway, was to get to a whisky sale even further up north on Central Avenue.) Continue reading
Three in Thai Town: Pa Ord 3, Sapp, Pailin (Los Angeles, July/August 2014)
This was a highly unusual trip to Los Angeles for us in the sense that we did not eat at Jitlada. However, we did eat a number of Thai meals, three to be exact: at Pailin Thai, Sapp Coffee Shop and Pa Ord 3. As with almost all of the better Thai restaurants in Los Angeles these are just a few blocks away from each other on Hollywood Blvd. in Thai Town. We’d enjoyed our meal at Pailin Thai so much last year that we knew we were going to go back and try more of their Northern Thai specialties. Sapp Coffee Shop and Pa Ord 3 we picked mostly in order to diversify our Thai Town holdings.
Let’s take the meals in chronological order. Continue reading
Supatra Thai
In my recent post about dim sum in the Twin Cities I complained more generally about the state of Asian cuisines in the area, saying of Thai that “[W]e have two Thai restaurants that are quite good on their day (On’s Kitchen, Bangkok Thai Deli) and a large number that are mediocre at best.” I’ve previously reviewed one of those mediocre restaurants (Krungthep Thai) and here, alas, is a review of another: Supatra Thai. Continue reading
Bangkok Thai Deli
Last week I wrote up a meal at Krungthep Thai in Minneapolis, the recent off-shoot of Bangkok Thai Deli in St. Paul and noted at the end that it had inspired us to return to Bangkok Thai Deli for lunch. Here is the write-up of that meal.
We’d eaten at Bangkok Thai Deli for quite some time until On Khumchaya left to open her own place. We had a few less than great meals at Bangkok Thai Deli in the intervening period until we learned a) that there had been a change in the kitchen and b) of the existence of the excellent On’s Kitchen. We defected double-quick and hadn’t been back since. I’m not sure why our mediocre meal at Krungthep Thai made us want to check out the mothership once more but it did. And I’m glad it did. Continue reading
Krungthep Thai
This is just a brief report on a lunch a few weeks ago at Krungthep Thai in Minneapolis, an Eat Street offshoot of the Bangkok Thai Deli in St. Paul. As noted before, the Bangkok Thai Deli was where On of On’s Kitchen used to cook, and they seem to be the launching pad for new Thai places in the cities. Krungthep Thai has been named the best Thai restaurant in Minneapolis by City Pages and the best Thai restaurant in the Twin Cities by Mpls. St. Paul Magazine, and while when we first came to Minnesota that would have been an utterly meaningless accolade, the scene is now much improved and so we were interested to check it out. Continue reading
On’s Kitchen
On’s Kitchen (at 1613 University Avenue W. in St. Paul) is one of our very favourite places to eat in the Twin Cities. It is a family-owned Thai restaurant started a few years ago when owner/chef On Khumchaya left the kitchen of the Bangkok Thai Deli (further down University Avenue). There was a marked dip in the quality at Bangkok Thai Deli after she left, and we haven’t gone back since we found her again a couple of miles up the road–they may well have recovered.
Anyway: On’s Kitchen’s menu contains a lot of the familiar Thai dishes that can be found on the menu of every Thai restaurant in the US, but there are also a number of more esoteric things on it that are well worth checking out. We’ve eaten up and down the menu and every meal has been at least very good–with one exception when On was away in Thailand. Everything is made to order and has the clarity and depth of flavour which tells you that they’re not using commercial pastes or taking any shortcuts. And unlike at almost every other Thai restaurant in Minnesota the food here is not cloyingly sweet. Service can be a little bit spotty when the restaurant is full–there are only two people serving and bussing the tables–but this is really a very minor complaint. Continue reading
Two in Thai Town: Pailin Thai and Red Corner Asia (Los Angeles, Summer 2013)
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: Continue reading