Mom’s, Thai-Style

Western restaurateurs tend to name restaurants after their children.

Studio City’s Sompun, in contrast, is a Thai restaurant named for the owner’s mother. I might have been tempted to say this illustrates a fundamental difference between East and West, but then it occurred to me that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of eating places in this country called Mom’s.

If you’ve gathered that I’m alluding to home-style Thai food, you are dead right. As it happens, Sompun is one of the best Thai tables in town and manages this feat despite being spatially challenged. The restaurant has two narrow dining areas separated by a wall. Tables have elegantly stitched place mats, and the dining room walls display a mini-gallery of bright paintings depicting, of all things, playing cards.

One Sompun appetizer, ka nom being yuan, is a terrific surprise. Ignore the menu description of a crispy shell and picture instead a mustard-yellow, razor-thin rice flour crepe folded around a deliciously light filling composed of cooked bean sprouts, crushed peanuts and shredded fresh coconut.

Tod mun are springy fish cakes made with lots of lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves, served with a beautifully spicy cucumber dipping sauce. This kitchen has also mastered that uniquely Thai appetizer, the stuffed chicken wing. This is a deboned version plumped with a ground pork and mung bean noodle filling, and it is almost certainly the best one in the Valley.

Sompun doesn’t serve especially hot food, but the northeastern specialty larb, coarsely ground beef or chicken mixed with rice powder, lime juice and the incendiary Thai chili prik ki nu, will clear your sinuses in a hurry. On the mild side, there is a fine deep-fried soft-shell crab with sweet and hot chili, though any hot chili present is well in the background.

These cooks have a good touch with noodle dishes, too. Pad Thai is exemplary, as is the mouthwatering Sompun noodle, a thick rice noodle scrambled with chicken and cooked egg.

Yen ta foe is a pink noodle soup laced with bits of pork, pieces of squid and crunchy, pale ivory-colored fish balls. The restaurant’s Indian style noodle is a pile of rice noodles steeped in a sauce made from coconut milk and curry powder, curiously combined (because of the Indian reference) with beef only.

Sompun does fine Thai-style curries, too, as well as most of the pork and chicken dishes that frequent local Thai menus and a lean, mean Thai shrimp salad. The kitchen also prepares one of the best limeades around (lemonade on the menu) and a creamy Thai iced coffee, stirred with a serious float of condensed milk on top.

Thai iced coffee hasn’t quite made it to Mom’s yet.

BE THERE

Sompun, 12051 Ventura Place, Studio City. Lunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Saturday; dinner 5-10 p.m. daily. Self parking. Beer and wine only. MasterCard and Visa. Dinner for two, $23-$38. Suggested dishes: ka nom being yuan, $5.95; tod mun, $7.95; larb, $5.95; yen ta foe, $5.95; lemonade, $1.95. Call (818) 762-7861.