Mid-city: Dinner at Noree Thai
Thai iced tea
Noree is the ambitious new project from business partners and Chefs Pla and Fern. While I love the casual Luv2Eat in Hollywood or grabbing a quick take-out from their Crying Tiger window, it’s always nice to have a nice spot to hang. And particularly in mid-city.
It was a hot night an I appreciated the frothy Thai iced tea.
place setting at Noree
This feels like a true sit-down restaurant and even the place setting indicates as such with nice napkins.
green papaya salad
One of my favorite dishes is green papaya salad. I’m always interested in seeing how this dish is handled. Noree’s had a nice selection of toppings such as whole peanuts instead of the usual crushed and nice ripe pieces of tomato. The green papaya was finely shredded.
ko-lae chicken
Chef Pla has said she wanted to bring ko-lae chicken to Noree. It’s tender chicken with a curry sauce. This came with a cucumber salad and sour sauce though I didn’t think it needed more sauce. I suppose it you wanted to make the dish spicier. I ordered everything in between mild and low spice.
tum pu pla ra – crab paste salad
We also got the tum pu pla ra salad which is salted crab, black crab paste and fermented fish sauce. This is a funky salad and not for the faint of heart. It took me half a second to get used to pungent dish.
crispy pork belly with Chinese broccoli
I really love morning glory, the usual greens I find at Thai spots. Noree doesn’t have that or other veggies really on their menu. Their strong points are the raw salads. So while I should have been happy with the green papaya salad or even the crab salad, I wanted more. So our helpful server pointed out the Chinese broccoli that came with crispy pork. Well, it turns out it was really more pork belly with Chinese broccoli. Heh. This is a great dish with rice.
I’m interested in trying the addictive crab curry at this location. Also, I would like to try the crab fried rice and the Phuket style baby squid rice. But all these dishes hold fond memories for me at their respective locations that made the dishes famous; Luv2Eat and Crying Tiger. I’m on the search for my new favorite dish exclusive to Noree.
7669 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036 — (323) 937-3100 © 2018 The Minty