Traveling Around Asia in LA, Part IV

We have now gone to Korea, Vietnam and Japan all in a span of a few days just by visiting different restaurants in L.A. Now we’re moving on to Thailand. I went to Sompun Thai in Studio City the day after Thanksgiving with some family visiting for the holidays. I thought the restaurant was adorable with its springy looking dining room. But would this restaurant be able to take down some of my favorite restaurants in Thai Town?

 

No, just by looking at the menu, I knew this was going to be one of those “angel wings, pad thai and curry” joints. Not that these are bad things and are in fact what we ordered. Let’s just see if they can do them well. We started with the aforementioned angel wings. These were on the skimpy side. I’ve had more stuffed ones in Culver City (that just sounds dirty). It was way weird to me they served it with ketchup which I ignored it in favor of the fresh pickled peppers and hot sauce condiments on the table.

The restaurant was nice enough to increase the soup size  since there were 5 of us. It was a light soup and not very spicy despite its glowing red color.

After thinking about the meal, the chicken green curry turned out to be my favorite. The curry was spicy enough for some to give up after a couple of bites but just enough for me (when did I turn into the bigger spice queen of my family?). I liked all the veggies in it and the eggplant was a great sponge of flavor.

I have a friend who is a great connoisseur of pad thai. I bet he would give this a B-, weighted for effort. It wasn’t bad per se but it didn’t even come with lime wedges. This is when my cousins started talking about a local Thai restaurant chain that I don’t think much of. Could it be that restaurant is better? No, I don’t think so. I just had a sneaking suspicion we shouldn’t have ordered “angel wings, pad thai and curry.” Well, maybe just the curry.

We wanted a vegetable dish and the only veggie dish we found without some sort of protein was a mixed veggies plate. I cannot recall the last time I had such a thing. It was basically vegetables in some sort of soy sauce mixture. It was like a plate of garnish.

We had hoped the best dish would be the deep fried soft shell crab but alas it was way too oily. For this round of traveling through Asia in LA, I think I’ll stick with Thai Town.

Sompun Thai

12051 Ventura Pl
Studio City, CA 91604

(818) 762-7861