Jitlada's menu is so long--200 dishes plus other specials posted in the dining room--that you wonder how any kitchen can master so much.
Perhaps it can't, because you'll see variations, depending upon who is cooking. Still, the food is good enough to keep the restaurant full day after day.
If it's hard to cook such a vast collection of dishes, it's even harder to decide what to eat.
Here are four picks from my last dinner there.
No. 99, pork short ribs with garlic (at top), is really good, if the cook puts on enough crunchy browned bits of fried garlic. The meat, cut into bite-size pieces and deep-fried, would be good even without the garlic.
Think about ordering No. 145, spicy lamb noodle (above), instead of the usual pad Thai, rad na or pad see ew. You'll get wide noodles with lots of tender chunks of lamb and fresh basil.
Several meats are cooked with garlic and peppper (No. 52), but the kitchen sent out red snapper (above), although it wasn't listed. What really stood out was the bowl of morning glory vine in lemon sauce that came with the fish.
The restaurant can get mildly creative, as in combining two sticky rice desserts, Nos. 170 and 173, so that you could have both mangoes and coconut ice cream on the same plate with the rice.
But why stop there, and Jitlada didn't, adding palm seeds and golden, syrupy garbanzos. That's the sort of surprise that turns up, once the restaurant gets to know you.
Jitlada Thai restaurant, 5233 1/2 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, Ca 90027. Tel: (323) 667-9809.
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