I recently did a book talk at Book Soup and on the way back, my wife and I decided to stop by the Luv2Eat Thai, the well-loved mini-mall restaurant off of Sunset, near Highland.
This is a pretty popular spot on the sub so I'll dispense with more background on them but let's just say that over the years, I find that their consistency and quality is generally really on-point, least of all for this part of town. Even close to 9pm, they were packed and we were lucky that we didn't have to wait for a table.
Food-wise…gotta say, this wasn't great though I'll take some of the blame here. It was just the two of us and we weren't starving so we just ordered two dishes + a side of pork belly.
The Good: green beans stir-fried with garlic and oyster sauce. Definitely wanted some kind of vegetable dish and this was executed nicely: really flavorful, the green beans still had snap to them. 8/10
The Not-So-Good: crispy pork belly on the side. This was on me: I just wanted some extra protein and I do love me some pork belly but the way they prep it here, it's really meant to be in a dish, not a standalone dish, and as such, they don't heavily season it because presumably, it's being tossed with other spices and sauces in a main dish. But as a side dish, it's just rather bland by itself (even though it was deep fried very nicely). My bad; I can't put this on the restaurant at all. No rating.
The Mid: curry fish noodle soup. This one of their signature dishes and in theory, it should have been great: a bowl of rich curry fish soup, made with sole, and then a side platter of vermicelli noodles and all kinds of vegetables so that you can create-a-bowl. The problem wasn't any of the ingredients — those were all solid — it was the temperature of the curry soup itself. In hindsight, I should have sent it back and asked them to reheat but it arrived to the table on the "warm but not remotely hot" side of things and when you add in all those cold ingredients, it takes the whole thing down to a "barely tepid," if that.
Maybe that's how it's supposed to be served but personally, it just wasn't enjoyable eating room temp soup noodles no matter how good the flavors are. 6/10
***
Earlier this week, I wanted to try Indigo Cow (more on them in a moment) so I scouted to figure out what was nearby, within walking, and that's how we settled on Sticky Rice, which has become a small chain in SoCal, aiming for a similar vibe/clientele as Night + Market but with a more conventional menu IMO. Their Echo Park location is on the corner of Sunset and Lemoyne.
We started by getting a drink at Spirit House, which used to be a tiki bar before the Sticky Rice folks took it over in 2019 (it's not obvious that it was a tiki bar but if you compare the interior design between the bar and restaurant, it makes sense). Vibe-wise, it's ok: small, cozy, decent music, but while they'll seat you there for the restaurant as well, the two-tops are a bit too small to comfortable fit a series of dinner plates. We should have ordered cocktails from the bar but gotten seating in the restaurant but whatever, it's not a big deal.
My wife wanted the gai yan, which is marinated, grilled chicken thighs with a small side of papaya salad, a sweet/spicy sauce, and some titular sticky rice. This was decent: the chicken was cooked well, with some nice flavorful char on the skin side and though it wasn't overcooked, it was underseasoned. You really needed the sauce to punch things up. 7.5/10
I ordered the Thai pork jerky which is deep fried pork strips; the texture isn't like Western beef jerky in case folks were curious/worried. The charred fatty bits are always the best with these but once again, I found the meat itself kind of underseasoned. The accompanying dipping sauce however went too far the other way: excessively salty and not much else going on there besides that. 7/10
For a starch, we got my wife's favorite: pad see ew and because we didn't want to add a protein (extra $) they asked if we wanted extra veggies instead and we said "sure" but I think that was a mistake because the noodles came out pretty soggy. I want my noodles to have some chew and while no one would ever confuse the typical pad see ew flat rice noodles with some al dente Italian pasta, what we got were super limp noodles that felt like they had melted during the stir-fry process. I suspect the extra vegetables –> extra water during the cooking process. The seasoning was fine but generic. 5/10
However, as mentioned, we didn't pick Sticky Rice because we were dying to eat there; it was a convenience because mostly, I wanted to come out here to go to Indigo Cow across the street. They're a small soft serve stand that specializes in ice cream made from milk imported from Hokkaido.
Now…maybe that's all branding bullshit — notably, "Hokkaido" has an appealing sound to it regardless if you know anything about that part of Japan — but as folks who travel to Japan now and then, I figured, "let's give it a shot" and the verdict is…not bad?
What my wife noticed is that there's a light, cheese-like flavor to the ice cream. It's not overpowering in that regard but compared to conventional ice cream, you can pick up those cheesy-y notes. It made things different but I wouldn't say it made it better. We added on their trio of brown sugar, mochi balls, and kinako (soybean) powder but tghe brown sugar barely added anything — though to its credit, the Hokkaido milk is not overly sweet — the mochi balls were whatever and my wife wanted more kinako powder. In hindsight, we probably would have been better off with getting the milk/matcha swirl instead.
This was fine, I'm glad we tried it, but would I ever think "I feel like some Indigo Cow for dessert!"? No, I would not. 7/10.
by soulsides
Dining and Cooking