Midtown Lunch

I thought long and hard what my first lunch in L.A. would be. In Midtown it was this place called Hing Won, and it epitomized everything about what a perfect Midtown Lunch should be.  So I wanted my first lunch here to be just as special.  Street food?  An all you can eat buffet?  French dip?  So many options.  And then I saw this on Squid Ink. When asked by a reader where she could find the best khao soi in L.A., “The Guru” (aka Jonathan Gold) pointed her towards Spicy BBQ- a Northern Thai restaurant on Santa Monica and Normandie, on the outskirts of Thai Town.

I’ve been a big khao soi fan ever since trying it for the first time a few years ago in a Chiang Mai night market. You don’t see it too often in American Thai restaurants because it is exclusively a Northern Thai dish, and most restaurants here don’t serve dishes from the north. I had actually never tried (or even heard of) khao soi before seeing it being eaten by others in that night market, and my wife had to use the patented finger pointing ordering system to get us a bowl.

I found a decent version in Midtown, but it was a far cry from the original (isn’t it always?) and I was pretty excited to see if L.A. could do any better.  (Spoiler Alert: It can, and it does.)

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