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Chow Down at Chai Toong

The eye-popping red and yellow sign outside announces that Chai Toong  serves E-San (northeastern Thai) food. The regular menu shows little of that but sounds pretty much like what you get at Yai, a long-established Thai restaurant in Hollywood. 

This isn’t a coincidence. Yai’s head chef left to take over Chai Toong, which is on Vermont Avenue just north of Los Angeles City College. What they still share is location:  Yai has a second branch farther north on the same street.

Chai Toong now serves Yai‘s lard na (meat and Chinese broccoli over rice noodles), which Thais say is one of the best in town, its crispy catfish salad and produces a better version of roast pork and Chinese broccoli than I had at Yai on Hollywood Boulevard.

The combination of fatty pork belly cubes and crisp vegetable was unpleasantly greasy there. At Chai Toong it is crisp, dry and almost fat-free.

Not everything is the same.  One friend got up and left when a dish that he dotes on at Yai wasn’t on the menu.  I’m sure he’ll be back once he hears that Chai Toong puts out excellent food.

Just one example:  crisp, fried fish, pla lui saun, handled in an innovative way that made a Thai chef friend sit up and take notice. After the backbone is removed, the fish is turned inside out, fried and covered with sliced lemon grass, red onion and spicy sauce.

The sweetened red curry sauce for deep-fried catfish slices is based on curry paste made at the restaurant, not taken from a can.

The eggplant salad is the best I’ve had—smoky, fire-roasted eggplant covered with ground pork and decorated with shrimp.

A wall menu in Thai offers jungle curry,  a standard but very good version of papaya salad and delicious, glistening dark pork ribs that are sour and slightly fermented. 

Or you can stick to popular standards such as pad Thai, red curry, chicken-coconut soup and beef salad. Or try a $4.95 lunch combination.

The restaurant name is spelled two ways—Chai Thung and Chai Toong, the latter closer to the Thai spelling.  Oddly, it opens into Betsy’s Filipino bakery next door so that the aroma of freshly baked bread occasionally adds a new note to the intricate seasonings that make Thai food so compelling.

Chai Toong Thai restaurant, 1001 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027. Tel: (323) 667-3432. Open daily 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Lunch special 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Yum, Yummy Panang Curry

It’s not nice to miss out on something really good.  But that was the plight of hundreds (was it thousands?) of people who attended the Thai New Year Festival in Hollywood.

What they missed was a taste of Chef Jet Tila’s silky, sumptuous chicken panang curry. Tila prepared a massive amount in a giant pan, but it still wasn’t enough to provide samples for more than a handful of those who watched his cooking demonstration.

Tila’s panang combines the key elements (sweet, salty, sour and spicy) involved in the taste sensation that Thais call yum and we call yummy, plus the  fresh herbal flavors of kaffir lime leaves and Thai basil.

Luckily, there is still a way to taste Tila’s panang, and that is to make it yourself, with his recipe. It’s an easy dish, once you’ve accumulated the ingredients. Shop for them at Asian or Thai markets (I found everything at the Bangkok Market, 4757 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90029).

The photo shows the panang dished up at the festival. Instead of chicken, you can make it with shrimp or tofu, Tila says. The outcome will be the same—yummy.

JET TILA'S PANANG CHICKEN CURRY

2 (13.5-ounce) cans coconut milk
4 whole kaffir lime leaves
2 to 3 tablespoons panang curry paste (depending upon how spicy you like it)
1½ teaspoons tamarind paste
1 teaspoon fish sauce
½ teaspoon sugar
1 pound boneless chicken breast, thinly sliced
¾ pound kabocha squash, cut into 1-inch pieces (the squash does not have to be peeled)
½ cup sliced bamboo shoots
¼ cup thinly sliced onion
¼ cup Thai basil, including stems
Sliced red bell pepper for garnish

Open one of the cans of coconut milk without shaking. Spoon out 1 1/2 tablespoons of the thick milk at the top and set aside. Measure enough additional milk  from the cans to make 3 cups. Reserve the remaining milk.

Stack the lime leaves and roll them up tightly, then cut the roll crosswise into very fine shreds. Set aside.

Heat the  1 1/2 tablespoons thick coconut milk in a large saucepan or Dutch oven. Stir in the curry paste and shredded lime leaves. Cook and stir for 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until the paste starts to brown.

Stir in the remaining measured coconut milk and bring to a boil. Boil gently, uncovered, until slightly reduced and thickened, 8 to 10 minutes.

Reduce the heat and stir in the tamarind paste, fish sauce and sugar. Add the chicken, kabocha squash, bamboo shoots and onion. Tear the basil into the pan.

Simmer, stirring often, until the chicken is cooked through and the squash is slightly tender, about 15 minutes.  The sauce should be thick but still fuid. If it has thickened too much, thin with some of the reserved coconut milk.

To serve, garnish with sliced bell pepper and accompany with steamed jasmine rice.

Makes 4 servings.

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A Pain Perdu Pancake

You may never have seen French toast--pardon me, pain perdu--like that at Café Laurent in Culver City.

Instead of the usual browned bread slices, you get a golden pancake composed of crumbled brioche, croissants and raisin rolls, with a few cranberries mixed in for jaunty color and powdered sugar over the top. Syrup too, as much as you need.   

The name pain perdu is French, like the café’s owner/chef Laurent Triqueneaux. It’s a breakfast item, served only until 11:30 a.m. weekdays, but all day on weekends, a good time to linger over coffee in the café’s pleasant patio garden.

Pain Perdu (French toast) is $8.75 at Café Laurent, 4243 Overland Ave., Culver City, CA 90232. Tel: (310) 558-8622. Open from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.