Jitlada Revisited

Back on our 2010 LA trip, we visited Jitlada for a large, spicy lunch. One dish that really made an impression on us was their special rice salad - the khao yam. We could not find any references online to anywhere else in the country that we could get it, and we loved it so much that not only did we think about it a lot afterwards, but it made both of our year-end favorites lists.

So when we started thinking about where to eat on our LA trip earlier this year, one thing that immediately went on the list was khao yam at Jitlada. We didn't need to eat an entire lunch there again (even though their menu of southern Thai specialties is so extensive that you could eat there for days), but thought we would drop by for the khao yam and maybe another salad or appetizer. 

I forgot to take a picture of Jitlada from outside, so here's the entrance to one of the dining rooms

With that "light snack" as our plan, it's no wonder that we thought it would be an appropriate "second lunch" on the day we went to Tsujita. Knowing how filling the tsukemen was, it seems ridiculous in retrospect.

We don't normally plan 2 lunches in one day, unless both are light snacks. Since we had more lunch restaurants on our list than we did lunch slots and we were trying to balance the various days different restaurants were closed, it seemed to make the most sense to get to Tsujita early when it opened, eat tsukemen, do some active sightseeing and digesting (thought maybe the Getty, but we ended up at Runyon), and then get a late lunch at Jitlada before they closed for the afternoon. If tsukemen was at 11, surely we could fit a couple of salads in at 2:30. Or so we thought.

We (mostly me) seriously underestimated the size of the bowls and how filling tsukemen would be. Even an hour long walk around Runyon Canyon in jeans (another planning error) didn't leave us much stomach space by the time we drove up to Jitlada. But we didn't want to skip it. Our hearts pined for that incredible khao yam (which is now spelled khao yum on the menu).

So of course we got the khao yum ($9.95).

In case you didn't read the other posts on khao yum, it is a Songkhla province style rice salad tossed with homemade sauce and assorted vegetables. The Jitlada version includes jasmine rice, mango, green beans, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, Thai chiles, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, bean sprouts, coconut and dried shrimp. The khao yum was still delicious, but we didn't feel as blown away as last time. I don't know if it's because it was our second time eating it, or because we've had a lot of good Thai food in the meantime (we were just at Lotus of Siam within the 6 months prior to the LA trip). It was still fantastic and unique, but just didn't move us the way it did last time.

We decided to try something new for our second dish. We had tried a delicious dip while at Lotus of Siam (which we haven't gotten around to writing about yet), which was light and refreshing, and that sounded like the right type of dish for that afternoon since we were still pretty full. Jitlada's menu had a whole section of spicy Thai dipped dishes. We went with the nam prik koong ($19.95).

Nam prik koong has shrimp, ground chicken and tomato in a spicy chili dip. We were imagining something like at Lotus, a small cup of dip surrounded by vegetables to dip, but couldn't imagine how that cost $20. (Most of the special dishes at Jitlada now seem to be within that price range.) Luckily it was much bigger than what we were visualizing.

It comes with a bowl of raw vegetables - cabbage, carrots and cucumbers - on ice. It looks vaguely similar to the bowl of vegetables they gave us on our last trip when our mouths were on fire from the spice level and we were melting in our seats.

The dip, although a bit pricey, was quite tasty. We really liked the spicy tomato flavor that permeated the dish, and the shrimp and chicken were cooked to just the right texture. The cool raw vegetables were the perfect dipping instruments and the dish was fun. It would have been a great dish if only we weren't so full. We were so full that we even took some khao yum to go.

We're glad we returned to Jitlada. We're not sure that we would make a special trip there on our next LA visit since it is rather expensive and LA has a lot of good Thai food. (Note that we don't feel it's pricey because it's Thai food, but rather above what we budget for most of our casual vacation meals.) Maybe we'll just get an order of khao yum to go since that is relatively cheap and what we want the most. That said, if you've never been to Jitlada, it is worth a visit, since they have a lot of southern Thai dishes we've never seen anywhere else.