Unique Thai Dining in Los Angeles

With a Thai population over 100,000, LA has its share of Thai eateries

If you find yourself in LA some weekend, for a unique experience, you might want to take a trip to Wat Thai LA, http://home.pacbell.net/dagravy/html/wat.html.

They serve up authentic Thai dishes in the Thai foodcourt tradition.

Rather than a restaurant trying to master all dishes, this is a collection of vendors cooking the dish(es) they cook best!

Thanks for the tip re Wat Thai LA.

For funky cheap Thai I like Sanamluang and for upscale (thus more expensive) I go to Rambutan Thai. Rambutan has a very unique appetizer list.

Thanks for the post. For my money some of the best cooking in America is coming from Thai kitchens. Take for example Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas and Spoon Thai in Chicago.

I beleive that ethnic food such as Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, etc is America's new Road food cusine. There is a certain narrow-mindedness on this board that doesn't allow for this type of conversation to take place. For additional information you may want to check out Chowhound.com.

Mousec, I agree with you completely about Thai, etc becoming the new roadfood in the US (for the past 30 years it has been the roadfood in CA).

When I was flying from Atlanta to Savannah just before Xmas I was explaining to the gentleman next to me (a native Savannahian [sp?]) that I was so excited to have eaten at Paschal's in the Atlanta airport because they don't have any meat & 3 restaurants in LA (trust me, the place in the airport was a thousand times better than Aunt Kizzie's) and how I usually go for lunch at my local Vietnamese place and I said to him, "you probably think that Vietnamese is really exotic but to me meat &3 is really exotic." He agreed with me.

quote:

Originally posted by mousec

Thanks for the post. For my money some of the best cooking in America is coming from Thai kitchens. Take for example Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas and Spoon Thai in Chicago.

Many years ago, the owner's of Lotus of Siam, sold a little place in Norwalk, CA , called Renu Nakorn, then moved to Las Vegas.
Renu Nakorn was written up back when the Original owners were in charge.
Since, it has become gawd awful, IMHO.
Yet, the LA foodies still praise it.

quote:

Originally posted by ericats
For funky cheap Thai I like Sanamluang

The last time we were there, their broth had a chlorine taste, like dishwater.
If you like noodles, get out to Alhambra and try Noodle Planet, on Valley, between Atlantic and Garfield.

quote:

Chowhound.com

See "Renu Nakorn" discussion above.
Those sheep are queer for the place!

Re Sanamluang: I stopped ordering the soup there because it broth was never hot enough (in your case it sounds like they just took the bowl right out of the dishwasher.) Actually, I don't go there as often because of the parking.

I like Noodle Planet better than Noodle World even though they are owned by the same person. The Noodle World on Valley (about two blocks west of Noodle Planet) is a dump; it seems like they wash the flatware by hand with cold water. Noodle Planet/World does do good Thai Noodles (the noodles at Rambutan are their weakness.)

Stupid_American, have you gone to that dumpling place on Baldwin in Acadia? I forget the name of it but it is a branch of a Taiwanese dumpling place. It's minimalist but it is really good.