(Nha Trang, amazingness...SGV)

(Guisados, Boyle Heights)

(Krua Siri, ThaiTown)

Krua Siri (Thaitown)

Reading the reviews of this place I got the impression that eating at Krua Siri was nothing short of the next best thing to a trip to Issan itself. Or at least to Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas. Pundits from major news outlets to chowhound gushed about the "secret" Issan menu with various types of laab, four-day fermented Thai sausage, and som tam for Thai tastes. After one visit (with more to come), I'm more curious than in love. The som tam with raw shrimp is fine, though not in the class of the product purveyed down the street at Ruen Pair, a little further at Yai, or way out in the Valley in the La Fiesta Mini Mall. The Thai sausage, perfectly acceptable though it is, was not as representative of citrus and spice as I had hoped, and inferior to the version at Pailin further west. One dish, though, completely caught my tongue, something they like to call Garlic Little Bird, a plate of small, not too oily, wings and bits of quail, touched with enough garlic to grace the next morning's first breath. Betwen dips in a dressing I've seen paired with fermented pork, one nibbles and carves the meat off the bones, balancing things out with bites of sticky rice. That dish alone is enough to bring me back. The duck laab, or maybe the catfish laab, or maybe the chicken laab, laced with pieces of intestine and spleen, await.

Nha Trang (San Gabriel)

For some time now, I've been looking for a place to find something other than pho, broken rice, baked catfish, bahn mi, and spring rolls without making the trip to Orange County. I think I've found a place to satisfy me for at least the 5-7 seven dishes they feature on the menu. The menu is stocked with Central Vietnamese dishes: the crowd favorite Bun Bo Hue (Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup...ask for the pig's blood if they don't give it to you), Bun Rieu (a tomato based soup with crab meat), Pho Ga (chicken pho...not sure if that's Central Vietnamese or not but, whatver, it's supposed to be tasty), and Hainan Chicken Rice (definitely not Vietnamese, but every other country in Southeast Asia claims it so why shouldn't Vietnam). I opted for the Mi Quang, a tumeric laced soup of egg noodles, pork (or was it chicken?), sauteed shrimp, some sort of cake which might have been cha (beef sausage), chili, fresh vegetables, and a host of flavors I don't quite recognize, topped with banh da (rice cracker). The downside to this place is that they close at 5 p.m. and only make enough items for the day (though I guess that's a positive, not a negative). Their operating hours are really the only reason I haven't made a return visit.

Guisados (East Los Angeles/Boyle Heights)
Guisados is located on a street packed with stores that would seem completely in-place at any local swap meet. The fleeting, sparse minimalism of the space, host to the occasional painting, seems closer to the regentrified urbanism of one of York Boulevard's new tenants than it does to most of what you would expect to find in Boyle Heights. The food, taking cues from the decor, comes arrives as far as one can get from the crispy, oil dripping, and irresistable odes to the DF one finds a little east at Antojitos Carmen, or to the blunt simplicity of a burrito at Al and Beas. I'm not sure it's authentic, though I have no reason to believe it's not, and in the end...what does it matter? What you won't find at Guisados are the basic meat, cilantro and onion constructions you're used to. Instead, what you'll find is a taco topped with a more homogeneous substance, more stew than anything else. For first timers, there's a sampler for $6.50 that features a selection of six mini-tacos: ranging from the chipotle tinged tinga de pollo, to a mole poblano taco, to chicharrones to the cochinita pibil. There's also a more than competent fish taco available, though it's not included among the choices on the sampler. Not up for tacos? The quesadilla is already my favorite in Los Angeles and, I guess, the world. I'm not a sophisticated enough writer to really do justice to why it's my favorite, though I will mention that it's crafted with some sort of queso fresca that arrives, slightly charred, and relatively solid in texture, and somehow, devoid of anything besides cheese and tortilla, is somehow amazing. The tamales are fine, home to seemingly fresh, structurally sound kernels of corn, though if you're used to the lard inflected versions down the street you might be disappointed. And though the owner will likely offer a disclaimer that he can't really consume it itself, the habanero salsa (you have to ask for it...which is probably safer in the long run), used in small increments, is essential.

Nam Won Gol (Koreatown)
I tracked this place down through a conversation I had with a Korean-American policeman/longtime resident of LA, in which I interrogated him, between dumplings at Din Tai Fung about the best bets for off the map Korean food in Koreatown. From what I can tell, they specialize in two dishes: a skate dish that I haven't yet tried and the chuh-uh-tang (Loach Soup/aka Mudfish Soup) popular in North Korea from what my friend said. So what is a loach? Apparently it's kind of like a freshwater eel, at least in appearance. The soup is even more murky than one might expect from the name, recalling more the dense patch of water my father and I were forced to unground a canoe in a few years ago than any of the red, cauldron-like soups you're likely to find at most K-town joints. And you won't find the loach anywhere in the soup, at least you won't see it, as it's been finely ground into a substance that pervades the entire breadth of the bowl, coating a stiff blend of greens that, again, remind me more of swamp than soup. If that's not a recommendation, I don't know what is. Surely you're tired of short ribs and pork neck soup by now.

Ham Ji Park (Koreatown)
If you are in the mood for short ribs and pork neck soup, and there are days when you should be, you could do far worse than this spot.

Song Fung Kong (North Hollywood)
How could one not find something worthwhile in a blog post entitled "The Wonders of North Hollywood's La Fiesta Mini Mall"? I did. And while I'm not sure that the ridiculous papaya salad here, or the almost equally good, sour, citrus-toned Thai sausage is, at the margins, worth the extra time I would spend driving to North Hollywood as opposed to Ruen Pair for som tam or Pailin for sausage, there's something special about eating amazing Thai food from a restaurant that, according to it's sign, sells Chinese food, in a tacky mini-mall. And if that doesn't draw me back, the prospects at its neighbor, La Perla del Pacifico, a spot that offers northern Colombian seafood, are too enticing to pass up.