Yum Sະlut (by Pha Khao Thip)

🇱🇦 LAOS
📍 645 N. Broadway, Chinatown, Central Los Angeles
🅿️ Free parking with validation
🥤 No Alcohol

EDITOR'S NOTE: This restaurant is within the Lokels Only space and shares a small dining room with three other vendors.

Lovers of Lao food that live in or near Central Los Angeles or the Westside are likely to complain about the state of the cuisine in the city. They will moan about their "treks" to the Valley or "schleps" to Orange County for restaurants. San Diego has a pretty good scene, and the Central Valley is blessed with dozens (almost 30!) of Lao restaurants, but Los Angeles does admittedly have a blind spot.

Thankfully for those people, and for everyone really, chef Tharathip Soulisak has recently upgraded his business and opened a full service restaurant called Yum Sະlut. Initially the space and menu full of puns and innuendo can make you feel that the food will not be extraordinary, but each beautifully plated dish slaps you in the face with excellence. The chef calls his cuisine "Lao refugee food" but honestly it seems so much more than that. If Lao food were on the radars of Michelin or James Beard as more than token nods, this restaurant would start being awarded all the silverware and be impossible to eat at (as it should be).

The new Thursday through Monday spot inside Lokels Only in Chinatown has evolved from a business selling Lao sauces, pastes, and beef jerky to a food trailer and pop-ups at farmers markets and elsewhere. Despite being packed into a shared kitchen with other vendors, Chef Thip is making diners feel very special when they sit down for meals. The food is fresh and bright, served beautifully on traditional plates and banana leaves, and most importantly: it knocks your socks off.

If there were not a bunch of people around enjoying plates of soul food, Yum Sະlut would probably make you feel like you were back in Luang Prabang with dishes like laap xeen ($18.88, above). This minced beef salad served medium rare and spiked with lime might seem fancy, but in Laos you would see it eaten daily by construction workers or anyone else. Here it is served with herbs and vegetables, sticky rice in a thip khao, a dipping sauce to spike it, and a side of sipping broth. Recommended.

Almost all foods in Laos are meant for communal eating, but there may be no dish better for it than pun pa ($12.88, above). The fresh herbs, vegetables, rice noodles, and peanuts are just as important as the bits of fried catfish, all meant to be wrapped up together. The fermented fish sauce served for dipping is spiked with pineapple and ginger.

The catfish has been tossed with herbs and spices itself, and could be a superb snack even without all the accoutrements. The plate will get passed back and forth on your table and picked clean, extra sauce will be drizzled on other dishes if any survives this onslaught.

If you are in the mood for noodle soups, Yum Sະlut has four options and none of them will let you down. The one that stands out the most, because of its name and because the chef used to sell sukiyaki sauce, is the Lao refugee sukiyaki ($12.88, above), which uses that famous sauce his mother first invented in refugee camps in Nong Khai. Lao people are right at home in this city in northeast Thailand since so many people there are also Lao, and her sukiyaki stand was a hit.

Mung bean noodles populate the smooth orange chicken and pork broth, along with various pieces of seafood, fish balls, and chopped up herbs and scallions. Chef Thip will most likely make his way to your table at some point during a meal here, so asking him about the origins of his dishes will likely lead to his face lighting up to tell you the long path they took to make their way to this Los Angeles table.

Equally enjoyable is a bowl of khao soi ($12.88, above), a northern Lao specialty that has little or no resemblance to its more well-known version that comes from northern Thailand. Here the name makes more sense though, with thick cut rice noodles once again in a chicken and pork broth. A slick of red chili oil pervades that broth, along with sauteed fermented soybeans and minced pork.

Khao piak gai ($12.88, below) would probably have its own month if there existed a calendar of chicken noodles soups of the world, a pleasing bowl of hand cut rice and tapioca flour noodles. Big pieces of dark meat are generously portioned in a chicken and pork broth that is full of ginger and garlic. Squeeze in some lime and chop off some pieces of the bird's eye chili that comes with the soup to add a kick.

Fans of nem khao ($11.88, above) will be over the moon with the version here, served with a heaping pile of herbs and vegetables to make more wraps. Aromatics are almost strong enough to be seen when the dish is laid down, and the curried rice has the perfect ratios of crispy and soft as necessary. There is grated coconut, fermented sour Lao sausages, and crunchy fried pork skin, along with peanuts and chili peppers.

If you do not order a full portion of thum mak houng, Laos' version of papaya salad, you can get a smaller portion with meat platters like the jeun sai oua ($17.88, below). The namesake sausages of this dish are delicious (maybe sourced from Nok's Kitchen?) and come served with a full portion of sticky rice and a side of Lao tomato chutney that the chef has invented. The thum mak houng is also delicious, terrifically spicy, and no afterthought. It seems somewhat of a cross between the more funky, fermented Lao version and its Isaan neighbor which adds a touch of sugar and far less crab and shrimp paste.

The menu has no weak points apparently, as dishes keep coming and surprising everyone at the table when they are so good. Opening the steaming banana leaves of mok pa ($16.88, above and below) causes everyone to lean in with anticipation. When the herbal aromas escape and hit your nose, the results do not disappoint.

The steamed fish inside has the essence of all the herbs it was cooked with, each bite already delicious without using the provided fish paste. Use a dab of it anyways since it is so good, and place everything between your fingers with a good ball of sticky rice. Once again, the beefy sipping broth that is served with the dish is good to calm your tingling mouth as almost everything is spicy.

If somewhere in your stomach there is still room for dessert, Chef Thip makes good versions of sticky rice with mango or durian, but if you have never tried the third option, grab nam wan khao lod chong ($8.88, above). In a nutty coconut milk soup, strips of coconut, pandan flour, and jackfruit all swim together to provide an array of sweet and sour flavors. Recommended.

After a couple meals here, it seems very obvious that the chef sees his time at the space as a stepping stone to something larger. The kitchen is crowded with multiple tenants, and having his own space will probably allow him to spread his wings even further. Until that time, Los Angeles is lucky to have his talent available anywhere, and you should stop by the next time you are around Chinatown during opening hours.

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Nok's Kitchen

🇱🇦 LAOS

📍 9378 Westminster Blvd., Westminster, Orange County 

🅿️ Ample parking in plaza.

🥤 No alcohol.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This business used to do pop-ups at festivals, catering, and mail service under the same name. Click here for the original article.

After gaining quite a following selling homemade sai oua to restaurants, markets, and for private sales, as well as doing swift business during festivals and catering events, Nok's Kitchen has finally been able to open up a full restaurant recently in Westminster. Since spring, Orange County has been home to the newest Lao spot in the Southland and they still feature these Lao sausages and much more. The restaurant is worth seeking out even if you think somewhere nearby is the best restaurant in the world.

The one page laminated menu is easy to look over quickly and shows that the sausages and other skewers of meat that Nok's was so popular for at festivals are still the focus. You can order skewers a la carte but also as combos with multiple pieces and sticky rice included. On the drinks side of things, a refreshing coconut juice ($5.25, below) or dragonfruit lemonade ($5.25, below) both make for excellent meal companions.

Despite having the feel of a fast casual place, meals eaten inside are served communally on a traditional "rice tray" pha khao and sticky rice is put in a bamboo thip khao. During this visit as takeout packages were inquired about, a woman from San Diego came in to buy sausages to take home. Despite that city having thoroughly excellent Lao food itself, she had come here and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nok's is unbeatable in that game.

Unfortunately for the foreseeable future it may be a bit more difficult for walk-in customers to get their hands on packaged sai oua to take home. As demand continues to increase from their larger clients, they are putting these on hold as they figure out more efficient logistics to keep the restaurant humming alongside the other side of the business.

If you are only coming here to eat one meal, you will not be harmed by any of this, as sai oua and the other grilled meats will always be available for dine-in customers. The pork sausage combo ($11.99, above) includes two links of the famous sai oua, a basket of sticky rice, and their dipping sauce which is at the same time wonderful and completely unnecessary on such a flavorful sausage.

The Nok in Nok's Kitchen is of course Nokmaniphone Sayavong, the chef whose name you will be singing after the first visit. Her sai oua have big chunks of course ground pork and pork fat inside along with plenty of chili, lemongrass and galangal. If you come alone and cannot share a bunch of dishes with friends and have no way to get takeout either, this is the right order.

While the sai oua is undeniably the star of this show, the other grilled skewers are just as good. The rib eye skewers combo ($14.99, above) is cooked as desired (you desire medium rare), and uses cubes of beef that have plenty of fat on them for a well-rounded flavor. The marinades used on this and the chicken both burst with the flavors of Southeast Asia despite only being a short drive from the many kebabs of Anaheim's Little Arabia.

While the majority of sticky rice in Thai and Lao restaurants has been frozen and reheated and never truly inspires, the serving here is big and fresh, fragrant from the bamboo it was steamed in. It may seem like an afterthought, but it should never be as in Laos this rice is a staple of the diet and every sit down meal.

Finally from the combo menu is the chicken thigh skewers combo ($10.99, above), two perfectly grilled thighs pinched between the wood used to grill them. In addition to the usual spicy, this order also includes a sweet dipping sauce and if you are coming from a longer distance and including a day at an Orange County beach in your itinerary, this is the perfect snack with sticky rice when you start feeling hunger again.

If this all seems like too much meat, the papaya salad ($11.99, below) pairs very well to contrast with all the skewers. This thum mak hoong is like the one Nok's served at the festival linked at the top, more on the Thai side of things. If you ask her why she shies away from the much more pungent version popular in Laos, it is just her personal preference. It is probably a good business move, even if it disappoints some Lao people and others that like this style, as it can be tolerated by many more palates.

Even if you were craving the Lao version when you walked in, this salad will not leave you disappointed, a combination of extremely fresh and crisp ingredients. Lao "medium" is usually fairly spicy but here proved a bit too tame for a dish that basically needs to bring the heat, so do not be shy to talk to them about your spice levels.

The big juicy lime half should be squeezed thoroughly over the nam khao ($11.99, below), as the only taste missing when it arrives is this citrus sharpness. This crispy rice salad is a classic of Lao cuisine and done very well here, the balls of rice made by combining it with curry and herbs before frying. These are mixed in with more herbs, a healthy portion of fermented sausages, peanuts, and more.

Nok's also has a classic beef larb, but more interesting during this meal was the larb salmon salad ($15.99, above), which uses many of the other ingredients of the dish but with lightly cooked chunks of salmon. While the dish has not found its way to many stateside menus, salmon is a more common ingredient in larb in Laos, and requires cooking with much less spice and herbs than normal as not to cover the fish's flavor.

This dish was caught somewhere in between the two, not quite letting the salmon shine through and not quite being full flavored with herbs and chili. But we can count on Nok's to bring a cutting edge to Lao food in Orange County, and will look forward to seeing if the dish evolves in the future. For a next visit, the beef will be paired with that beautiful basket of sticky rice.

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LaoMazing Eats & Nok's Kitchen

LAOS 🇱🇦

📍 Catering and pop-up events, please check with vendors for locations.

EDITOR'S NOTE 18 MAY 2022: Nok's Kitchen has opened a permanent location in Westminster, Orange County. We will link to this once visited.

After following both LaoMazing Eats and Nok's Kitchen on Instagram for a while and being jealous whenever they posted large catering orders, it seemed like the stars aligned when they announced a partnership for a stand at the 2022 Tet Festival at the OC Fair and Event Center. As one of the first vendors in the food row, their large dual banner above the stand was visible even from the parking lot and loomed large as bright eyed potential customers emerged onto the grounds hungry.

The Orange County-based businesses made a special combined menu for the event, and you could select options from one or the other, or both as happened on Sunday. Between the two chefs, a nice broad base of Lao cuisine was offered and anyone that wanted to stray from the Vietnamese theme of the day was rewarded with some delicious eating.

Weirdly most of the other vendors at the event were not offering Vietnamese food. There was a Cococane knockoff that consistently had the longest lines, a seafood option that also had cafe sua da, and two really tasty looking traditional vendors, but the rest was a combination of things that looked made for social media and viral videos.

On the other side of the grounds there was some even heartier devouring when one of several pho eating contests was taking place. Unfortunately sign-ups for this were closed by the time they were noticed.

From LaoMazing Eats, two dishes were ordered and thoroughly enjoyed, both consisting of ingredients that were much fresher than you might expect being served at the fairgrounds. While not containing any offal unfortunately, the beef larb ($15, above) was delicious and spicy nonetheless, using chewy just grilled cuts of meat and fresh herbs.

This was complemented well with the nam kao ($15, below), a less spicy dish of rice balls and sour fermented pork sausage. You can break off pieces of the roasted chilies if you want more fire, but these were left alone since the larb and the papaya salad from Nok's were so spicy.

No matter where or when you find Nok's Kitchen, it seems that their famous lao sausages must be part of an order. The combo #1 ($15, above) was a good way to try them most traditionally, with a good-sized ball of sticky rice to eat them with. They also gave a couple sauces to add spice and fermented paste tastes to your meal as desired.

Seeing and hearing fresh papaya salad ($12, below) being made, it was impossible not to order this as well. Nok's cuts up the Vietnamese pork meatballs into their version, which looks and tastes more like Thai som tum than Lao tum mak hoong. Even this "medium" order was leveled up to an extreme level, so the crunchy pork rinds and sticky rice from the other dish were well appreciated.

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Eat the World Los Angeles is and always has been free. It is a hobby born of passion and never solicits money or free food from restaurants. No advertisements block the content or pop over what you read. If this website has helped you explore your city and its wonderful cultures a little better please tell your friends about us and if you have the means to contribute, please consider doing so. Eat the World Los Angeles is a labor of love, but also takes a lot of money and time everyday to keep running.

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Sabaidee Lao & Thai Street Food

LAOS 🇱🇦

EDITOR'S NOTE: An updated version of this article (19 February 2025) is available as part of the Historical section of our Substack page. Check that out here:

https://eattheworldla.substack.com/p/sabaidee-lao-and-thai-street-food

While Southern California is home to a spattering of Lao restaurants and other businesses, it is by no means the epicenter of the Lao and Lao American communities in the United States like it is for many other peoples. In addition to the Northern Virginian outskirts of Washington D.C., Dallas and its surrounding area became the destination of many refugees after this country made Laos the most bombed nation in the world. While immigration from Laos is still quite small compared to many other places (the country is very small as well), most still happens in those two places four decades later.

So it is only natural that empires have formed over the years like Sabaidee, which has four locations in Dallas and its northern suburbs. Thankfully for the Inland Empire, the fifth location has opened at the Haven City Market in Rancho Cucamonga, a two year old food hall that seems to be bursting at the seems since COVID safety rules have been eased.

Like its counterparts in Texas, the Haven City Market outpost is fast casual and mostly takeout. The market has some outdoor seating that you can take your meals to, and plenty of other spots to grab some drinks and dessert when you finish. The Thai in "Lao & Thai" is referring to Isaan province in the northeast of Thailand, a place that shares so much history and culinary techniques with Laos. So plan for the often spicy foods that straddle the border of these two places rather than pad thai or drunken noodles.

Start with their delicious nam khao ($12.99, above top right), a dish of crispy fried rice balls mixed with cured sour pork sausage (som moo) and full of scallions, cilantro, mint, fish sauce, and lime juice. It is usually topped with a healthy portion of peanuts, but that might be left off here to avoid allergies of unknowing customers. Some dried red chili is included in orders on the side and should be employed for the nam khao as it is served without spice.

This is not the case for their thum mak hoong ($11.99, above), which they will request a spice level from you. Lao food starts at a higher level than most, so a 3 out of 5 "spicy" rating should give dishes like this the proper amount of kick needed. Unfortunately the papaya salad that was put into this order somehow had the level 5 "extreme" and was definitely extreme. All the wonderful elements of a really good thum mak hoong were there, it was just scorched by far too much heat.

Thankfully the larb gai ($11.99, below) was correct at its level 4 "extra spicy" preparation. The minced chicken dish can have a good upgrade because it can be tempered by cool and crispy bites of lettuce and cucumber, along with sticky rice like the thum mak hoong.

Despite the small hiccup with spice level, it is quite a lovely surprise to see complex and sophisticated Lao cooking in such an informal setting. Hopefully the people in Rancho Cucamonga and surrounding communities will have a love for Lao food that will let the franchise expand further in the Inland Empire, and then Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

Even those with no familiarity with the cuisine will find a nice entry point with an order of the Sabaidee wings ($9.99, one below, full order in top photo). These fried wings and drumsticks are marinated with soy sauce and garlic, but the sharper herbs and lime are what show through. Unfortunately the ones served on this day were just a touch dry.

A stroll around the Haven City Market is fun, some vendors of used clothing set up outside while a thorough assortment of restaurants offer just about anything you could want inside. A few arcade games and even some sit down bars provide entertainment for those with and without children.

And if you are not living in Rancho Cucamonga, make sure to look up when you are on the streets. It is always a pleasure to be close to Mount Baldy and the highest peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains.

📍 8443 Haven Avenue, Rancho Cucamonga, Inland Empire

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Owl Owl Thai Lao Street Food

LAOS 🇱🇦
THAILAND 🇹🇭

EDITOR'S NOTE: An updated version of this article (04 October 2024) is available as part of the Historical section of our Substack page. Check that out here:

https://eattheworldla.substack.com/p/owl-owl-thai-lao-street-food-long-beach

At the beginning of April, as the city began its move towards fully reopening again, a cute owl also opened its doors in Signal Hill and became another rare-ish opportunity to sample the foods of Laos. Unlike most places that have Thai and Lao in their title though, this does not seem to be a Lao restaurant also adding Thai food to their menu for greater reach.

Both cuisines, especially dishes that might be found by street vendors in each country, are featured just about equally on the menu, and the lingua franca on the day of this visit was definitely Thai. Before there is any food though, the vibe seems a bit off, or maybe they are just getting used to opening up to the world.

Despite having a seating capacity of about 20, they will not allow you to use their restroom, giving a lame excuse of needing a food handler's license to go through the kitchen and instead sending you to the barber shop next door or Office Depot across the street. Or perhaps you could try the guns & ammo store they share the plaza with?

When dishes like namtok ($12.99, above) start arriving, all is forgiven as the beef cuts are cooked to perfection and slathered in a spicy dressing of lime, toasted rice powder, chilis, cilantro, green and red onions, and tamarind.

Also full of talent is the moo ping ($9.99, above), five sticks of pork that have a delicious marinade and slight char from grilling. These really give the feeling of street foods they are going for, and the excellent nam jim jaew they serve with them for dipping is a spicy dream.

Less successful but certainly not a turn off, the Lao dishes sampled on this visit included a nice big bowl of kao poon ($10.99, below), a chicken curry noodle soup that is here made well on the sweet side with plenty of coconut milk.

Nothing automatically comes with sticky rice, which should probably go with many of the foods here, so do grab a side order to enjoy with dishes like their Lao sausage ($9.99, above). This is satisfying if not life changing, the pork links are full of lemongrass, galangal, and a bit of chili.

They offer Thai teas and coffees, as well as butterfly pea flower tea, but those might be hard to enjoy if your ride home takes a while. Hold it!

📍 2201 E. Willow Street, Signal Hill, Harbor.

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Eat the World Los Angeles is and always has been free. It is a hobby born of passion and never solicits money or free food from restaurants. No advertisements block the content or pop over what you read. If this website has helped you explore your city and its wonderful cultures a little better please tell your friends about us and if you have the means to contribute, please consider doing so. Eat the World Los Angeles is a labor of love, but also takes a lot of money and time everyday to keep running.

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Royal King Elephant

🇱🇦 LAOS

EDITOR'S NOTE: An updated version of this article (01 February 2024) is available as part of the Historical section of our Substack page. Check that out here:

https://eattheworldla.substack.com/p/royal-king-elephant

 
As with most Lao restaurants in the country, the cuisine of Thailand is also offered on the sign outside and throughout the menu. Here they don't separate it into sections and dishes unique to each country intermingle on each page. You probably will not be disappointed by the Thai selections, but this will be about Lao food, somewhat harder to find and what makes Royal King Elephant a special place.

Ever since their soft opening at the end of April 2016 and a few smatterings throughout online media, the restaurant has lived a relatively quiet life. The tiny little space in a strip mall serves up big flavors and with items like sticky rice containers and homemade fried bananas for sale amongst many other items, also acts as a communal hub for the Lao community.

Many photos of elephants adorn the walls, as well as other remembrances of Laos. Just like when you are in the small landlocked country, Thai music is playing over the speakers while a basketball game is on TV. The condiment selection on each table is really good, although most of the dishes come prepared just right.

One mistake made during this meal was asking for the tam mak hoong ($11.99, above, Lao-style) to be prepared less spicy than the other dishes. Lao cooking depends on heat and papaya salad is not a dish to eat mild, no matter what your limits. The salty crab and other Lao additions were all ready to be ignited together, but the lesson is learned.

After everything that was ordered came to the table, a plate of sai oua (above, on the house) arrived as a sampler, crispy and perfect sour Lao sausages full of aromatics and ground pork, and served with a chili dipping sauce.

A bowl of khao poon nam jeow ($12.99, below) is an exercise in how uncompromising the kitchen here can be. This is said in a flattering way, as many kitchens are eventually forced to either tone down their heat or take out the offal when they serve different crowds. The bowl served here is exactly what some wide-eyed tourist might see a Lao person diving into at a night market, before searching for something else. Go for it.

The menu does not try to hide this and lists the ingredients clearly: "Pork liver, intestine, tongue, and pork blood" amongst the greens. For a slightly less offal-centric bowl, try the khao poon nam gai, which replaces everything but the pork blood (which is necessary in any khao poon) with chicken.

Knowing the larb was going to be the spiciest part of the meal led to the mistake described above, but thankfully this dish was thoroughly enjoyable and sweat-inducing. Despite its absence in some versions here and in San Diego, tripe is an essential part of larb seen ($12.99, below), a beef larb also full of Thai chilies, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, onions, mint, cilantro, lemon juice and fish sauce, and the crunchiness of toasted bits of sticky rice.

The larb is another dish that proves the kitchen's insistence on bringing the most real foods to Garden Grove that Lao people miss from back home. They also serve a few types of pho, which certain Orange County reporters have warned against ordering saying they are un-Lao, but anyone who has visited the small country knows that it is full of Vietnamese people and pho is what you eat almost every morning.

They also serve khao piak, a chicken soup that Lao people also eat for breakfast, fresh clams and blood clams, and favorites like tom zap and nam kao tod. While the kitchen may not soar to heights where people describe it as the greatest in the entire world, there is still so much going right here.

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GARDEN GROVE Orange County
 9924 Garden Grove Blvd.

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Kim Thai Food ขันทองสองฝั่งโขง

🇹🇭 THAILAND

EDITOR'S NOTE: An updated version of this article (12 January 2024) is available as part of the Historical section of our Substack page. Check that out here:

https://eattheworldla.substack.com/p/kim-thai-food

 

In the front of La Fiesta Swap Meet there are posters with hints of Persian kebabs and Salvadoran pupusas, but no mention of the stall named "Kim Thai Food" in English. For that, walk through the main entrance and all the way to the back, where a small food court of sorts exists. Next to those aforementioned stands are also a new Jamaican vendor and some ice cream.

The Thai name (Kan Tong Song Fung Khong) is actually more telling of what you will find on the menu here, the last three words of which translate as "both sides of the river." For a Thai restaurant, this is usually describing the Mekong River which separates the northern provinces of Thailand with Laos. The kitchen is ready to churn out specialties from both sides.

Make your way past clothing, hat, and shoe vendors, past sleepy workers watching movies on their phones, walls full of veladoras, and the many barbers and salons in La Fiesta to sit down for a spicy feast. "Kan Tong" is the name of the original owner of the stall, who went by the nickname Kim. No matter what language you prefer, an exciting meal is on the way.

This meal started with a delicious plate of naem khao tod ($10, above), which immediately went to the top of the power rankings with the one at Vientiane down in Garden Grove. In addition to the rice cooked with curry paste and sour sausage, they include peanuts and roasted chili peppers. Freshly chopped up ginger seemingly pervades each and every bite in such a good way.

As lunchtime came, so did many Thai people, mostly getting takeout to bring back home or to their office. While Thai Town is well known in East Hollywood and full of great restaurants, by the 1990's a lot of the Thai community was finding its way to the other side of the Hollywood sign and settling this part of the Valley. Spots like Kim Thai Food have been much loved for a long time, even when not part of most conversations when speaking in languages other than Thai.

It was noticed that absolutely everything was made fresh to order here, giving each and every bite a real crispness. Even the fried pork skin garnish to the larb bpet (above), a minced duck salad that started bringing the real heat, was lowered into the fryer after asking for the dish. All the right parts were here to make this fantastic; insides, toasted sticky rice, and of course more of those roasted chili peppers that seem to be a signature of the chef.

You can usually get a sense of what spice levels are standard in a restaurant from initial conversations with a chef about heat. Here at Kim getting a nice bead of sweat going did not seem like something that would be a problem, and it was suggested that even medium levels would do the trick. This is in fact true, and you can mix in pieces of fresh cabbage, herbs, and cucumbers to help relieve yourself when necessary.

Continuing in the theme of freshly prepared plates, the familiar sounds of green papaya salad being prepared only got started after this order of som tum lao (above), a Lao-style version that omits the sugars more beloved on the other side of the river and focuses on the salty and funky. It was definitely the most spicy of the three, a required quality for successful som tum.

The skill that the kitchen prepared all three of these dishes makes many return trips now necessary to explore the rest of the quite large menu. In addition to Lao soups and grilled and sweetened meat skewers, it can probably be assumed that more standard dishes like stir-fried noodles should be excellent as well.

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NORTH HOLLYWOOD San Fernando Valley
12727 Sherman Way

Banh Phonkeo's Food To Go

🇱🇦 LAOS
📍 110 47th Street, San Diego, California
🅿️ Small plaza has parking.
🥤 No Alcohol.

EDITOR'S NOTE: An updated version of this article (05 January 2024) is available as part of the Historical section of our Substack page. Check that out here:

https://eattheworldla.substack.com/p/banh-phonkeos-food-to-go

 

Because they have so much less familiarity with the majority of people of Southern California and the rest of the nation, Lao business owners often offer some foods that are claimed by Thailand as well and insert that comforting "Thai food" into their names and menus. This is not the case at the lovely Bane Phonkeo's, which is attached to the Muang Lao Market in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of San Diego.

A hyper-focused kitchen attached to a market that together bring the products and tastes that a small community misses so much from back home? Was Bane Phonkeo's Food To Go created by some algorithm that was geared to exactly why this website exists in the first place? Even when driving up and parking you can tell this is an exciting place to eat.

Despite being part of the name, the "to go" is not forced, and there are quite a few tables in the open dining room. Each table is set up with a tray of condiments to spice or sweeten up your dishes, proving that they do expect quite a lot of eat in business During this visit, most of the customers were indeed getting takeout, but one Lao American woman brought her boyfriend in to share the wonders of the cuisine.

The menu seems limited, with two boards flanking the open window to the kitchen, but each time you return you will find that there is more on offer by snooping around the counter and asking. Try dishes like khao piak sen, a sort of chicken noodle soup that can only be found in Laos, usually at restaurants who set up for morning eaters. Or maybe the Lao-style beef jerky? There is nothing else like it in the world.

An obvious point of entry into the restaurant is the laab ($10, above), available in chicken, fish, shrimp ($6 extra) and the beef shown here. Sometimes a half portion could be useful because ten dollars gets you this heaping mound. Add in what they call a "small" portion of sticky rice, and you can almost feed three people.

This Lao-style laab is proper in every way, first and foremost by using a combination of mixed meats. Some restaurants that cater to western customers will only use the lean parts in a dish like this, but here they make it with all the insides that should be there to make it right. With mint leaves on top and full of galangal, onions, and kaffir lime, the dish is so crisp and refreshing and almost perfect. Ask for it as spicy as you can handle.

Checking out some of the packaged goods on shelves or in the refrigerator always seems to lead to finding something new to enjoy here or take home. One item they always seem to have (above) are what you commonly see in night markets over a charcoal grill. These eggs are not simply cooked over a flame though, this is just the last step. First the hole will be punched out of many shells, the contents emptied out and mixed with seasonings like salt, white pepper, and chives.

This mixture will be reinserted into the shells and then steamed to cook thoroughly. The grill gives the finished product the smoky flavor it is known for. It is like eating scrambled eggs that are ten times better than scrambled eggs. What will be on offer during the next visit? Already looking forward to it!

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