This Tiny Spot in L.A. Is the Only Place I Ever Want to Eat Again

If you suffer from crippling indecision, then you're going to need to get a grip before you pass through the threshold—an unassuming glass door—of Northern Thai Food Club, a new restaurant in Los Angeles.

Because the 33-item menu won't make things easy on you. Neither will the heady fog emanating from a hulking metal steam table, crouched in the corner near the kitchen like some sort of wish-granting machine. And to complicate matters further, owner Nancy Amphai Dunne will offer you tastes of whatever you like.

Northern Thai Food Club, which opened in January 2019 in L.A.'s Thai Town, specializes in dishes from Chiang Rai, Thailand, like gaeng hang lae, a mahogany curry punctuated with chunks of braised pork belly that made its way into the region by way of Myanmar.

Unmissable, too, are the tum kha noon—a warm salad of pan-fried jackfruit, limey and pungent with curry paste and garlic, festooned with a handful of chopped herbs—and the khao soi gai, a sweeter, thicker take on the coconut milk and egg noodle curry.

"The direction of your meal," writes L.A. Times critic Bill Addison, "is best decided in a conversation with Dunne over the steam table."

Visit Northern Thai Food Club

Northern Thai Food Club

5301 Sunset Blvd #11

Los Angeles, CA 90027

(323) 474-7212

Have you been to Northern Thai Food Club? Let us know what you ordered in the comments!