Editor's note: This piece was originally published in the Los Angeles issue (No. 21) of Lucky Peach, the beloved and now-defunct food magazine started by chef David Chang. Since this article ran, Tiu died at the age of 66. ~ RIP on behalf of the LA Taco community.
[dropcap size=big]I[/dropcap]n an L-shaped strip mall on the part of Sunset Boulevard that runs through Thai Town in East Hollywood is a restaurant called Jitlada: the Original Southern Thai Cuisine. On any given night, the wait list, on a clipboard that hangs next to the entrance, is usually long and might include Ryan Gosling, Drew Barrymore, or Matt Groening, who has drawn so many illustrations for Jitlada that an entire wall in the restaurant is dedicated to them. While you wait for your name to be called, you can visit the other shops in the mall: the marijuana dispensary, the Thai convenience store, the florist, the barbershop, the day spa.
When it is your turn, Sarintip “Jazz” Singsanong will take you inside and take care of you. Jazz owns the restaurant with her brother Suthiporn “Tui” Sungkamee, who is the chef. Once seated, you’ll likely be overwhelmed by the hundreds of dishes improbably crammed onto the few pages of the menu, at which point you’ll do well to turn to Jazz for help. She will recommend the delicately fried morning glory, one of Tui’s curries, and maybe one or two more of his southern Thai specialties, like deep-fried fish rubbed with fresh turmeric, the khao yam rice salad, the raw blue-crab salad mixed with papaya, or the soft-shell crab, fried and tossed with pungent sator beans. If she has the time and the ingredients, she might offer to make you her Jazz burger, a patty laced with garlic, palm sugar, and spices, presented on a giant lettuce leaf and topped with red chilies, special sauces, tomatoes, red onions, and Thai basil. The proper thing to do here is to listen to Jazz, to follow her lead.
A burger might be the last thing you’d expect to find at a southern Thai restaurant, but it is, in a lot of ways, perhaps one of the most LA things you could eat. Indeed, the story of Jazz, Tui, and Jitlada is as Los Angeles as the palm trees and the footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.