It’s the talk of Thai Town

A mound of fragrant jasmine rice arrives at the table piled high with a montage of slivered green mango, sliced lemon grass, finely cut green beans, bean sprouts, cucumbers and shredded carrots and cabbage. It’s sprinkled with julienned kaffir lime leaves, ground dried shrimp and chile powder and served with a small bowl of sweet-salty budu sauce and a wedge of lime. The hostess comes to the table and with a large spoon tosses the whole fabulous salad together, telling you that her naam budu is made in-house with anchovies, herbs, lemon grass and garlic, and that you have to use all of the sauce that’s given to you, along with a squeeze or two of lime, to get the right balance of flavor.

This is khao yam, a southern Thai specialty. And it’s one of the reasons Thai cuisine in L.A. is great again, after more than a decade in the doldrums. Regional Thai cooking is returning to the fore, and the excitement is right there on the plate. In Hollywood, new owners at a Thai Town institution have amped up a southern Thai menu complete with some of the wildest curries and most intriguing salads (including the khao yam) you’ll ever encounter. A multi-regional Thai restaurant with an extensive menu of northern, southern and central Thai dishes has opened in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. A couple of longtime Orange County Thai favorites known for their Isaan cuisine have remodeled or rebuilt, with plans to expand. And the energy just seems to keep building.

Beyond the familiar citified cuisine of Bangkok and the tropical central plains, rural regional cooking encompasses more assertive tastes and varied textures. Raw shellfish punctuated with sassy tartness. Aromatic herbs with transporting, pungent flavor. Dry-curry meats with searing heat.

But you have to know what to look for. Flip past the mee krob and tom yum kai and look for the special southern Thai menu or northern Thai menu in the back. Or it might be on a well-worn page stashed behind the cash register. Hunt it down. The dishes are apt to be the favorite foods particular to the chef’s home village -- and the best Thai you’ve probably had in a long time.

Ask for help: If you show some interest, the staff will be happy to make recommendations.

In the past, although Thai restaurants found it more lucrative to satisfy the American palate with the familiar roster of central-style food -- pad Thai, coconut chicken soup -- a few would offer at least a couple of dishes from their own region. These places were few and far between, but in the ‘80s and ‘90s diners who had traveled in Thailand were thrilled to drive to Panorama City to Satang Thai to eat pungent kaeng leuang, a catfish curry filled with fermented bamboo shoots. In Hollywood, Chao Neua and V.P. Cafe offered northern specialties. As many Thai food buffs know, restaurants serving northeastern-style Isaan food were somewhat more abundant. But in the ‘90s, they started disappearing. After a while only a few northeastern-style restaurants remained to represent the powerful flavors of rural Thailand.

Happily, several new restaurants have taken their place.

One such spot is Lum-Ka-Naad in Reseda. Alex Sonbalee and his wife, Ooi, opened their multiregional Thai restaurant last spring. They’re cooking the food of their own regions -- he’s from Chiang Mai in the north and she’s from Krabi in the south. Knowing that the L.A. area has the largest Thai population outside Thailand, they believed their cooking would woo Thais who miss dishes from home. Because few Thai restaurants serve regional cuisine in the Valley, they saw a niche.

“We also believed we could succeed because here in L.A. there are [non-Thai] people who understand our food,” Alex Sonbalee says. Apparently, the Sonbalees are on to a trend. The upswing has coincided with increased investment from Thailand after the collapse of the Thai currency in 1997, Alex says. More Thai money in town means more demand for the highest level of Thai cooking, and restaurateurs are responding.

Each area of Thailand has a distinct flavor palette. You’ll find the northern Thai mainstay of pork in rich spiced curries (some made without the coconut milk prevalent in central Thai curries) and in sausages spiked with ground lime peel and garlic, always served with “sticky” rice. The rich pork rounds the spicy flavors with its slightly sweet edge. In the northeast, colloquially known as Isaan, the cuisine is dictated by the region’s harsh, dusty landscape with no access to the sea. Dried chiles, herbs plucked from the rice fields, lime and fermented fish lend their flavor to wild boar or raw freshwater shrimp. In the same region, many Thai-Lao dishes are similar but not as aggressively seasoned. Southern flavors are the boldest and spiciest, the herbs more pungent and the taste of fermented ingredients more apparent.

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The south

Thais say southern food is the ultimate of phet (spiciness), as intense as the fast-paced, clipped dialect of the area. Sandwiched between two oceans, the southern region is a skinny isthmus with access to an amazing array of seafood and freshwater fish. Both the land and the food bridge Thailand and Malaysia.

Curries are packed with Malay-influenced spices, fermented fish seasoning and ocher-yellow fresh turmeric. A signature tartness comes from plenty of lime, palm vinegar, tamarind and other sour fruits.

“Thai food at a lot of restaurants is too sweet,” says Srintip “Jazz” Singsanong, who with her brother and chef Suthiporn “Tui” Sungkamee took over Thai Town stalwart Jitlada last year. The homey, randomly decorated Hollywood restaurant tucked into a Sunset Boulevard strip mall had languished for several years, but under new ownership it has become a surprising source for fantastic southern Thai food. Though the dishes can certainly be searingly hot, most are manageable (if you ask for medium spicy), and incredibly nuanced.

When chef Sungkamee took over the kitchen he added his own southern-style dishes prepared with family recipes, but these were written in Thai script. Enter a visiting Chicago food blogger who translated and annotated the Thai menu, revealing these southern specialties -- like the khao yam (rice salad) -- to non-Thai speakers. Most Angelenos had never braved the heat of kaeng kop som thawn, the curry of frog legs and slices of plum-like pickled santol fruit only slightly mitigated with a little coconut milk. Catfish curry with wild tea leaves the color of cavalo nero seems refined next to the rustic kaeng paa plaa duk luuk taw, catfish curry sprinkled with sator tree “beans,” a delicacy (and perhaps an acquired taste) synonymous with southern food. There’s little pork on the southern-dish menu, in deference to the south’s large Muslim population.

Jitlada offers not one but two crab salads: yam priaw dawng, or pickled crab salad, has the sweet-sour flavors of lemon grass, loads of garlic and a showering of mint, and the puu pen phla, a spicy blue crab salad -- chunks of salt-cured uncooked crab piled with julienned green papaya, lemon grass, mint, slivers of red onion and chiles. You suck the raw meat from its shell doused with all the juices from the fruit, vegetables and herbs. There might be small shell pieces scattered throughout, but who cares -- it’s addictively delicious.

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The north

Among the most comprehensive northern menus are those at Top Thai in Reseda and Spicy BBQ Restaurant by Nong & Family, a tidy, minuscule place in Hollywood where the tables are covered with Thai textiles and what looks like elaborate holiday tinsel crosses the ceiling. The restaurants are run by two Thai sisters, Noi and Nong Sriyana, who hail from the northern Thai town of Fang.

The north, isolated geographically until the 1920s (one could get there only by elephant or complicated boat trips), has remained as distinct from central Thailand as Kauai is from Manhattan. And so has its cooking. The area has a grand mixture of influences from its many hill tribes, from the ancient Chinese settlers and from the neighboring Lao and Burmese. You see the influence in Spicy BBQ’s kaeng hangleh, a Burmese-influenced curry with pork chunks, sliced ginger, whole cloves of garlic and peanuts and the famous khao sawy curried noodles.

At Top Thai and Spicy BBQ you’ll find classic versions of naam phrik num, a dip of mashed charcoal-roasted serrano chiles and naam phrik awng, a dip reminiscent of chile con carne. Laap tod (translated as a salad), a plate of slider-size marinated pork patties, comes doused with a piquant garlicky dressing. Of course, the north being pork country, there is sai ua, a fat sausage that surprises with its tart jolt of kaffir lime peel and lemon grass livening the rich ground meat and the platter of vegetables it’s served with. Be sure to order the glutinous “sticky” rice, ubiquitous in the north, that you roll into bite-size balls and use, with your fingers, to pick up your food. You pick up some spicy pork or green papaya salad with the slightly sweet, soft, chewy rice and eat it all together.

The north’s reputation for fairly mild food isn’t evident at Spicy BBQ Restaurant, where the heat of country-style vegetable curry, kaeng khae, or the outrageously good northern-style pork salad with herbs and lemon grass, laap neua, could compete with Tabasco sauce. Some might want to order these boldly seasoned dishes “phet noi” -- lightly spiced.

At Lum-Ka-Naad in Reseda, Alex Sonbalee turns out northern-style laap plaa duk, crispy catfish salad, and ground pork salad laap kua. The fresh ka (galangal) in these dishes is a northern trademark. His tom kha nun, a minced jackfruit salad with ground lime peel, comes with a beautiful display of lightly cooked vegetables for dipping. Meanwhile, his wife Ooi is cooking her favorite southern dishes -- her kaeng tai plaa, a soupy curry of fish and sliced fermented bamboo shoots appeals to those who love their food ultra hot and sour.

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Isaan

Isaan cuisine’s torridly spiced salads of raw beef, raw freshwater shrimp (“naked shrimp”) and grilled offal are often dressed only with what’s at hand: pungent herbs, dried (not fresh) chiles, toasted ground rice and lime. Yet it all comes together marvelously.

At the new, stylishly appointed restaurant Khun Lek Kitchen in Bellflower, the Isaan dishes -- written by hand on a Thai-only special menu -- burst with wild spicy flavors: There’s koi soy, a salad of raw marinated beef that may also be had with raw shrimp. There’s barbecued liver salad, spicy beef tendon soup and lively kanom jiin noodles in curry. There also are Isaan dishes scattered throughout the regular menu: bamboo shoot salad and neua naam tok, sliced beef salad with lime juice and dried chiles.

Once extremely isolated, Isaan’s impoverished farmers often sought jobs in Bangkok, and some opened street stalls selling regional dishes. The food eventually became trendy in Bangkok as Thai yuppies discovered it and began opening stylish Isaan places in the late 1980s and eventually in L.A. The Isaan practice of snacking throughout a performance of traditional music and dancing has evolved into the urban custom of accompanying any sort of entertainment with Isaan faves, which inevitably are offered at Thai nightspots.

A few blocks away from Khun Lek Kitchen is the real-deal Can Coon, named for the traditional Isaan reed instrument. At this tiny (cash only) place, most of the Isaan dishes on the menu are listed under specialties or circled. Affable owner Vinischai Satuporn guides your choices (“too many hot dishes,” he might exclaim). Plaa dad deo, butterflied trout over slivered green apple with lime and chile makes a great foil for the burning kaeng som seafood curry or scalding laap kung, chopped shrimp salad.

You could hear a collective moan from fans of northeastern Thai food when two beloved Isaan restaurants, Thai Nakorn and Renu Nakorn (not related) in Orange County, recently closed. But it wasn’t long after its devastating fire before a new Thai Nakorn settled into a large remodeled space in Stanton. (Another Thai Nakorn also is set to reopen in the Garden Grove location.)

Its sauté of wild boar with herbs, a dish that reflects the region’s love for game, has all the hot-sweet-meaty-herbal flavors that made us fall in love with Thai food. There is also barbecue tongue, raw shrimp cured in lime juice and the now-familiar host of tear-inducing grilled salads. The new restaurant even has a dedicated “pastry” chef preparing Thai desserts daily.

Renu Nakorn, rivaling Thai Nakorn as the most popular Isaan-style restaurant in Southern California, was the place that made “crying tiger” (seua rong hai) notorious. It’s sliced rare grilled beef served with sticky rice and an extremely hot dipping sauce. Last year the mall it inhabits decided to completely rebuild, but fans are thrilled that the restaurant will open in the same location, “projected for December,” says co-owner Umpa Sripetwannadee. Look for tub waan grilled liver salad with bamboo shoots and spicy hor mok, a pudding-like blend of highly spiced thick coconut milk and chicken steamed in banana leaves.

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Thai-Lao

A handful of restaurants in Orange County serve Thai-Lao cuisine. It’s the food of the ethnic Lao people who have always lived in the Isaan region. In fact, more Lao live in Thailand’s Isaan region than in Laos itself, so it’s not surprising that Thai-Lao cooking incorporates dishes from the entire area close to the border.

Many dishes are nearly identical to Isaan ones though not as spicy-hot. You’ll see this at tiny Vientiane in Garden Grove, a 2-year-old shoe box of a place named for Laos’ capital city.

On the photocopied menu (there’s also a menu with color photos) you’ll find Lao sausage-laced fried rice that’s peppered with nuggets of pan-crisped rice chunks. The sautéed clams with chiles are simply wonderful, as are the fine rice noodles in yellow curry that you sprinkle with herbs, salad greens and squirts of lime. Catfish chunks come infused with kaffir lime and steamed in a banana leaf.

A few miles away the more spacious Dee Dee Thai-Lao restaurant offers a crisp deep-fried beef jerky, nuah savanh, that’s as thin as paper; and delicious house-made lemon grass-spiked sausage, sai kok Lao. A number of terrific Lao-style noodle dishes include explosively spicy tum mee, a salad swirled with morning glory leaves, green Thai eggplant and tomatoes. Khao phak moo kob, “homemade” thick rice noodles in broth, are dotted with crunchy fried fresh bacon and topped with fried minced garlic.

Back at Lum-Ka-Naad in Reseda, the kitchen seems to be on the forefront of what’s happening in Thai cuisine. Not only can you order dishes from the country’s northern, southern and central regions, but you can start your meal with the house specialty: the sausage plate with a different version from each of Thailand’s four culinary regions. It’s likely a repast to be found only in L.A.

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food@latimes.com

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Spotlight on regional dishes

Northern Thai: Khao Sawy

You can’t walk more than a few feet in Thailand’s largest northern city, Chiang Mai, without running into a place selling khao sawy. Soft, wide egg noodles are suspended in a creamy coconut milk broth, then more noodles -- deep fried and crunchy -- are heaped on top. Alongside come tiny saucers of hot roasted chile oil, chopped shallot, pickled greens and fresh lime. The dish, which came south via Burma with Muslim traders from Yunnan, China, isn’t easy to find. It may escape notice -- even at northern-style restaurants. On Spicy BBQ Restaurant’s menu, for example, the dish is simply called “egg noodles in northern Thai curry.”

Isaan: “Naked Shrimp”

Many Angelenos may have been introduced to this dish by way of the popular Thai restaurant Chan Dara, where it’s grilled shrimp in a salad. But “naked shrimp” in the Isaan region of Thailand is shrimp plucked from local rivers, served raw out of the shell and dressed with just dry chile and lime. Eat them sashimi-style, or use your fingers to pick them up with tiny balls of sticky rice.

Thai-Lao: Nuah Savanh

Driving along Isaan and northern roads, you see vendors selling their meat dried to various stages of leatheriness. You can buy it aged one, two, three or more days. Just about every Thai-Lao restaurant prepares dried meat. At Dee Dee Thai-Lao restaurant in Anaheim, the paper-thin dried beef, having been soaked in a sweet garlicky marinade, is cut into slabs slightly larger than playing cards. It gets a light sprinkling of sesame seeds before being deep-fried. It’s addictive nibble food. You break off little chips and dip them in the house special sauce, a devilish mixture of dried red chiles and tomato sauce.

Southern Thai: Khao Yam

A complex, nuanced, gorgeous toss of ingredients that often is described as “rice salad,” this is perhaps southern Thailand’s most popular comfort food. Garnishes can include peanuts, toasted coconut shreds, shallots, julienned kafir lime leaves, chiles and tiny dried shrimp; green mango, carrots and other vegetables are arranged over jasmine rice. It all gets tossed with a sauce that includes budu, fermented anchovies.

--Linda Burum

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A guide to regional Thai restaurants

Northern

Spicy BBQ Restaurant by Nong & Family. A super talent plies the stoves at this minuscule northern-style restaurant hidden in a strip mall next to a falafel place. The specialties listed toward the back of the menu include kaeng hangleh (pork curry spiked with whole cloves of garlic, slices of ginger and peanuts) and naam phrík num (a dip of roasted serrano chiles that comes with lightly cooked vegetables). 5101 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; (323) 663-4211. 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Closed Wednesdays.

Top Thai Cuisine. It may be on a less-than-hip stretch of Reseda Boulevard, but the dining room is handsome and the china elegant. Proceed directly to the back page of the menu, for the northern specialties -- proprietress Noi Sriyana will be happy to make recommendations. Don’t miss the muu ping, garlic-infused strips of pork; khao sawy noodle curry; or sai ua pork sausage. 7333 Reseda Blvd., Reseda; (818) 705-8902. Lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner, 5 to 9:30 p.m. Open for dinner only on Sundays. Closed Wednesdays.

Isaan

Can Coon. Although its setting is beyond nondescript, the flavors at this six-table Isaan-style place leap from the plate. Any one of the blistering salads, seasoned with pak pai (an herb that tastes like cilantro raised to the 10th power) will impress. The fermented sour rice sausage and shrimp laap (larp kroong on the menu) are some of the best in town. 9887 E. Alondra Blvd., Bellflower; (562) 925-0993. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Khun Lek Kitchen. Crisp white tablecloths, contemporary art and a mirrored karaoke room mark this as a restaurant with aspirations, and the light, clean food lives up to the look. Check the menu and daily specials board for such Isaan favorites as raw shrimp laap or catfish salad. 9208 1/2 Alondra Blvd., Bellflower; (562) 804-6602. Open 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Closed Wednesdays.

Renu Nakorn. The remodeled Isaan standard is scheduled to reopen in December, and there’s much anticipation. What will it look like? Will the food still be good? The owners are also linked to acclaimed Thai restaurant Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas. Soon to open at 13019 Rosecrans Ave., No. 105, Norwalk; (562) 921-2124.

Thai Nakorn. This longtime favorite Isaan spot has reopened in a new location. Upholstered booths along the walls create casual-chic comfort. The food is as good as ever, and the service has even improved. A brightly lighted deli case stuffed with house-made Thai-style desserts and snacks dominates the room, but the sweets are a side show to regional specialties such as wild boar with spicy sauce. 11951 Beach Blvd., Stanton; (714) 799-2031. Open 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Soon to open at 12532 Garden Grove Blvd., Garden Grove.

Thai-Lao

Dee Dee Thai-Lao Restaurant. This pleasant airy space with a tiny dance floor might give the impression there’ll be a party thrown after hours. No such luck; all the better to focus on the beautifully prepared Thai-Lao specialties: kao poun nam pa, an outrageous red curry over noodles; pla goong -- grilled shrimp with pulverized fresh chile sauce; and the mok pa, herb-strewn fish steamed in banana leaves. 311 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim; (714) 956-2997; deedeerestaurant.com. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, and Sundays. 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Closed Mondays.

Vientiane Thai Cuisine. College-age sisters help out with the serving, Mom is in the kitchen and you can imagine a Thai grandma lending a hand at this super-cozy Thai-Lao spot. Pad phet kra pao (frog stir-fried with basil and lots of garlic) and chicken pieces steamed with kaffir lime in banana leaf are wonderful. 10262 Westminster Ave., Garden Grove; (714) 530-7523. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Southern

Jitlada Thai Restaurant. This cozy spot has been a fixture in Thai Town for decades, but its new owners have amped up the special southern Thai menu (flip to the back of the regular menu), and it’s terrific. Specialties include the yam priaw dawng (pickled crab salad) and the khao yam (rice salad). 5233 1/2 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood: (323) 667-9809; jitladathaicuisine.com. Open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; 5 to 11 p.m. on Mondays.

Multi-Regional

Lum-Ka-Naad. The brash tart heat of the south and the warm mellow flavors of the north come together in this rustically styled dining room where the restaurant’s forward- thinking owners aim to spread the word about “true” Thai flavors. The food is meticulously prepared -- laap plaa duk (crispy catfish salad) and laap kua (ground pork salad), for example -- and often comes with the restaurant’s signature platters of palate-cooling fresh vegetables. 8920 Reseda Blvd., Northridge; (818) 882-3028. Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

--Linda Burum