Midtown Lunch

When the craving for Thai food hits, those who aren’t satisfied by pad thai and yellow curry alone will usually make the trek into Thai Town for the real deal.  Boat noodles at Pa Ord, jade noodles from Sapp, crispy catfish from Ganda, khao soi from Spicy BBQ or Pailin, and crispy pork w/ morning glory from Ruen Pair are the kinds of things that aren’t as easily found west of Highland.  But what happens if you live or work on the Westside, and those cravings hit at a time when you can’t make the 30 minute drive East?  There are plenty of Thai restaurants to choose from, dotting the landscape along Venice, Robertson, and Lincoln.  And a few of those places might make your favorite prik king.  Or massaman curry.  Or pad thai.  But when Natalee Thai is the best Thai food in your neighborhood, there might be a little room for improvement.

Enter the newly open Moo Moo Thai Cafe on Sepulveda and Venice.

Moo Moo is actually not entirely new.  We first met this place back in August when it was called Thai Market, and featured a $5 lunch special alongside refrigerators of fresh Thai produce that in theory should have made for fresh and authentic tasting food.  It didn’t.  Thankfully it appears to have gone through a complete overhaul on every level.  Sadly the grocery area is completely gone, but if it means they’re serving better food as a full fledged restaurant, I’m all for it.

The first hint you have that this place is not your typical westside Thai restaurant is the menu itself. Unlike most Thai restaurants in the area, where curries and stir fried noodle dishes are king, “noodle soups” is the largest section of the Moo Moo menu- featuring 12 options that function more as a meal than a side dish.

The Moo Moo noodle soup is the kind of typical noodle soup you can find being served out of little stalls all over Thailand.  It features rice noodles, pork meatball, and two other kinds of pork, plus bean sprouts, green onion and chili flakes.  Order it medium and it will have some nice heat to go with the sweet broth.  There are also soups with bbq pork and egg noodles, a stewed chicken leg soup, glass noodle soups, a duck soup and more.

They even have Kouy Jub, a sweet and fragrant soup with a dark broth that features rice noodles, with crispy pork and pork offal (most notably liver.)  A tad bit on the sweet side, it was almost as good as the version they serve at Ruen Pair. And the rolled up rice noodles and crispy pork were both pretty great once they sopped up all the soup.  Best Thai soups in all of L.A.?  Maybe not.  But most of them are $6.50-$7.95 and are hands down better than anything else you are going to find in the area.

But it’s not just the soups that are exciting… there are still other things that bode well for the place.

For example their papaya salad ($7.95) features dried shrimp (in addition to the whole shrimp) and when ordered medium was pretty damn spicy.  It was also a tad bit on the funky side, and unlike the soups it was not sweet at all.  If you like your papaya salad with some nice funk, and don’t mind them leaving out the sugar, you will be really into this.  And they even offer a raw crab version when they can get their hands on the stuff.  (Reminder: Yes, we’re talking about a Thai restaurant off Sepulveda!)

They have 3 curries listed on the menu (yellow, red, and green) but Thai street food seems to be much of the focus of the menu.  They serve roast pork with Chinese sausage, crispy pork and egg over rice with gravy (a dish you’ll see everywhere in Bangkok) as well as Hainan chicken rice, another dish you’ll find everywhere in Thailand- although they don’t call it Hainan chicken rice.  The owners of Moo Moo just named it that so people in L.A. would know what they were talking about, but they assured me that their version is as good as any in the city, with special interest paid to the rice (as it should be.)  Definitely at the top of my list of things to try the next time I go.

They also serve crispy pork with Chinese broccoli (one of my favorites) or kra-pow as a replacement for the ground pork (seen above.)  The crispy pork could be cooked a tad bit better (it was pretty dry), but the dish was plenty spicy, and doesn’t hold back on the flavor.

Not everything on the menu is great, though. Their crispy pork fried rice sounded like it would be loads of fun, but it turned out to be just fine (definitely could have used some more pork!) The good news is, they’re willing to pretty much add crispy pork to everything on the menu, in place of regular pork, for an extra charge.

For example… their Moo Moo Pad-C-U is serviceable- but maybe getting it with crispy pork would make it outstanding!  Then again, even with the regular pork it’s head and shoulders above any version within miles.

Even though it is fairly obvious that this place is run by Thai people who take their Thai cooking relatively seriously, we are on the Westside. So there has to be something that makes you go “WTF were they thinking!?”  And at Moo Moo Thai Cafe that’s the “Special Moo Moo Pad Thai” which is advertised on the wall.  It’s a typical Pad Thai, but they replace the noodles with crispy Chinese style wontons.  Yup.  Pad Thai nachos.  I have to admit, if you like crispy wontons and you like Pad Thai, there is no way you’re not going to like this.  Even so, it’s more of a novelty than anything, and I don’t know if I’d order it again, but the flavors were good enough that I would feel really comfortable ordering their Pad Thai.

The best part about Moo Moo for anybody who works nearby is so much of the menu sounds good.  There are 10 more soups to try, a stir fried rice noodle dish where they stuff the rolled up rice noodles with pork, mushroom, and tofu (Kouy-Taey-Lord), and of course the Hainan chicken.  There’s also this Thai salsa they seem pretty proud of (Nam Prik Ka-Pi) and a baby pork rib dish that could be good (Tom Zapp).  And I can’t imagine their grilled pork served with spicy lime sauce is bad either.

Go into Moo Moo Cafe expecting the best Thai food of all time, and you might be disappointed.  But if you live or work on the Westside, and always wished that there was just one place that even resembled what you can find in Thai Town or North Hollywood, that wish has finally been granted.

The + (What somebody who likes this place would say)

• Forget Tom Yum.  I love Thai Noodle Soups! Can’t believe there’s finally a decent place to get them on the Westside.
• Love me some  Thai crispy pork action, and they’ll pretty much add it to anything! (They do know that Moo Moo is the sound a cow makes, right?)
• Love to see long beans and tiny dried shrimp in my Thai food.  Can’t believe I’m seeing it at a place west of La Cienega
• Love my papaya salad funky.  And the fact that sometimes they’ll do it with raw crab is just a bonus!
• Finally, a Thai place on the westside that won’t hold back on the spice.
• Thai street food FTW

THE – (What somebody who doesn’t like this place would say)

• What are you talking about? Natalee Thai is awesome!
• You didn’t even try the curries?  Or the pad thai?  Those are my favorites…
• I love crispy pork, but their version is a little too dry.
• They’re a bit stingy with their crispy pork in the crispy pork fried rice.
• Why settle for just decent Thai food?  I’d rather drive to Thai Town.

Moo Moo Thai Cafe, 11127 Venice Blvd. 310-287-9999