Thai Around the Clock : In Los Angeles, Bangkok-style street food is served at all hours

You may easily get lost in Bangkok, but you’ll never go hungry. As everyone who visits that city quickly discovers, selling food is unquestionably the city’s largest enterprise.

It begins early with rice soup sellers dishing up bowls of ginger-topped khao tom (rice soup) for cab drivers, or a bank manager who juggles his bowl and briefcase. By 8 a.m. the streets are lined with entrepreneurs offering deep-fried tofu with sweet sauce, lush tropical fruits to eat from a plastic bag, fried chicken, grilled sates , bowls of noodles and a dazzling selection of sweets in every shape and form. Similar vendors market their wares from mini kitchens fitted out in sanitized stainless steel on the top floor of the city’s largest department stores.

Late into the evening, the eating continues. When the discos close and parties end, Thais head for specialty shops or the night market stalls that sell warm, soothing bowls of joke (rice porridge) or khao tom . Either dish will remedy the ills of too much drink, or lull one to sleep like a glass of warm milk.

In Los Angeles, although they’re a little harder to find, we have the same Thai food specialties in surprising abundance. Many of the restaurants that offer these dishes are open late, some until 5 a.m., and several serve joke and khao tom.

Joke , a relative of Chinese congee or chook , is rice cooked to a smooth puree in a broth. Khao tom is simply rice in a broth. These may sound bland, but in the hands of Thai cooks they become a feast of contrasts. Chicken, pork or seafood go into the basic soups, along with an optional raw egg which cooks in the scalding broth. Sprinkled over all of this are plenty of fresh ginger slivers and a few leaves of fresh coriander. Chinese sausage, pickled Chinese greens and other sharp-tasting accompaniments are often ordered on the side.

The Ping Pong Cafe is L.A.’s answer to street-side Thai breakfast carts. Every seat in the room provides a view of the cook in Ping Pong’s tiny, utilitarian kitchen. There’s a blackboard menu written in Thai, but you can simply tell the cook what you want in your khao tom, joke or noodles. Breakfast foods are all this shop serves, but breakfast lasts from 7:30 a.m. until 7 p.m.

Some Americans might have to adjust to the idea of noodle soup for breakfast, but Ping Pong’s noodle broth is just right for an early meal--and not overly seasoned. Like the khao tom and joke, the noodles (rice gwaytio or egg mee ) come topped with chicken, duck, pork or sliced beef.

On its dining counter, Ping Pong has a row of jars filled with items like sweetened corn, grass jelly and lychee nuts. These are spooned over ice, soda fountain-style, with pink syrup and condensed milk. Another specialty of the house, which may take some getting used to, is leu moo a pork blood and pork offal soup that is supposed to fortify one against the ills of the day.

Ping Pong Cafe, 5136 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 669-9904. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner (until 7 p.m.) Wednesday through Monday.

Ruenpair, conveniently located across the mini mall parking lot from the Palm Restaurant cabaret (see story below), offers the largest variety of accompaniments for khao tom , including a salad of tiny dried fish with chile and onion, deep-fried salted fish, and 1,000 year-old egg. Unfortunately, Ruenpair’s menu is written strictly in Thai (there is a perfunctory Thai menu in English, but there’s little of interest on it).

An older, more established place for joke and khao tom is Torung. In the last few years the restaurant’s good food has attracted an early evening crowd, most of whom are not Thai. After 1 a.m., however, rice soup becomes the restaurant’s most popular dish.

Torung’s menu is translated into English. But you may still want to consult your waiter if you don’t know what “ancient egg” or “preserved vegetable salad” might be.

Ruenpair, 5257 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 466-0153. Open Monday through Saturday 6 p.m.-5 a.m.

Torung, 5657 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 464-9074. Open nightly from 5 p.m.-4 a.m.

The three Sanamluang Cafes (in Hollywood, North Hollywood and Pomona) are good places to get rice soup, but only after 10 p.m. First and foremost, however, these cafes are Thai noodle shops. The Hollywood branch is always jammed around 2 a.m., and if it is a warm night, the crowd spills outside.

In the dish called “general’s noodle,” fine egg noodles called mee are topped with barbecued pork, roast duck, a few shrimp, scallions and roasted, crushed peanuts. The dish comes either in soup or dry.

Beef tendon soup ( gwaytio sen yai ) might only appeal to more daring eaters, but it comes with broad, fresh rice noodles and chunks of stewed beef in a spicy, rich beef broth. Emperor’s noodle is also made with gwaytio sen lek , but in this dish the noodles are lightly fried with chicken, seafood and egg. It’s a rather mild dish, but you can douse it with the green chiles in vinegar sitting in a jar on each table.

The best of the noodle dishes might be the Indian curry noodles: flat rice noodles in a rich coconut milk sauce with peanuts, hard cooked egg and slices of beef.

Sanamluang has much more than noodles. A salad of roast duck slices, dressed with a sweet-tart-hot lime dressing and lots of crunchy red onions and herbs, makes a nice counterpoint to all those noodles. But kanom pakard, a soft rice flour bun stuffed with minced Chinese greens, is disappointing; its exterior is slightly tough and too oily.

Sanamluang Cafes, Hollywood, 5176 Hollywood Blvd., (213) 660-8006. Open 10 a.m.-5 a.m. daily. North Hollywood: 12980 Sherman Way, (818) 764-1088. Open 10 a.m.-midnight. Pomona: 1648 Indian Hill Blvd., (714) 621-0904. Open 9 a.m.-3 a.m. daily.

Khun Khao is a family-run curry kitchen. The curries, served buffet-style from steam tables, change daily. There’s also an extensive menu of other Thai dishes and curries. Though curries ordered from the menu--beef curry with eggplant and coconut cream, for example--are very good, the curries from the table always seem best.

On weekends there’s a menu of chef specialties written in Thai, but you can probably get the owner to translate. Of these, I tried a marvelous plate of mussels stir-fried with egg and vegetables--a Thai Hang-Town fry of sorts. The mild dish came with a flaming red dipping sauce on the side.

Many, however, come to Khun Khao for dessert known as kanom , meaning little cakes. It’s not unusual to see sweets sold at Thai cafes, but few make them fresh every day as Khun Khao does. The full array of custards, steamed desserts, colorful jellies and items difficult to place in Western dessert categories are displayed in a glass case. One of the best, banana and sweet sticky rice is steamed in fragrant banana leaf packets. An almost chewy cassava pudding is topped with whipped coconut cream and a single rose petal for decoration. There are large squares of Asian pumpkin custard to be eaten in slices, and bite-sized taro balls stuffed with sweet-salty ground pork. The assortment changes daily.

(Khun Khao plans on expanding soon and will close for approximately two weeks; call ahead.)

Khun Khao, 13550 Roscoe Blvd., Panorama City. (818) 786-6969. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday.

Sunshine Thai has long been known for its desserts. These are a different sort than the kanom at Khun Khao. Instead, the restaurant sets out a table filled with a row of cooking pots which contain foods that can only be described as warm puddings. Such exotica as cassava cubes in a slightly sweet, viscous syrup are spooned into a bowl and smothered in rich, creamy coconut milk. Others include cooked bananas, large tapioca balls or sweet black beans.

For many years Sunshine was the only place that made mango and sticky rice, one of the most popular Thai sweets. The rice is cooked in coconut milk and topped with the mango and a light coconut cream.

Sunshine Thai Restaurant, 861 North Western Ave., Los Angeles. (213) 462-0234. Open Monday through Saturday 11 a.m.-11 p.m.