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Looking for Adventure, Thai-style : How do you get the most authentic cooking in Southern California? Go regional : Thai Food : Thai Food

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The intense competition for L.A.’s Thai dining dollar has Thai restaurateurs experimenting with high-tech decor and rock music, midnight delivery and spiffy logos. But most are reluctant to experiment with the standard Thai menu--dishes proven to please American tastes. All Thai food lovers know this repertoire by heart: pad Thai , mee krob , chicken-coconut soup, shrimp with mint and chile.

But the Thais themselves enjoy a much greater variety of food. If you know where to go, it’s possible to eat as they do. With the advice of some Thai friends, I sampled several restaurants that cater to primarily a Thai clientele. You may automatically be handed the standard Thai menu in these places, but there’s often another menu, one that offers regional specialties and the sort of Thai comfort foods I haven’t tasted since leaving Bangkok. Even familiar items are likely to taste different--they might include more exotic ingredients or just be flavored more authentically.

What follows are some of my personal favorites.

The food we think of as “Thai” in Los Angeles actually evolved mostly in Thailand’s central region. It’s aristocratic cooking that was first served in the lavish palaces at Ayuthay and Bangkok. It’s also the food you’re most likely to be served in a Los Angeles Thai restaurant.

But Thailand’s other regions have cuisines of their own. Chao Nue is a perfect place to get the feel of a northern-style regional meal. You’ll probably be offered a printed menu bearing the restaurant’s English name “Alisa.” This menu lists the familiar central-style dishes you can get in any Thai restaurant. But check your table and you’ll probably find a menu of northern dishes, handwritten in Thai. A written English description of these dishes is yours for the asking.

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A good way to introduce yourself to this cuisine is to order the two staples of northern cooking: nam prik ong , a red ground meat chile, and nam prik num , a green vegetable chile. With your nam prik comes a parade of side dishes, including sticky rice in a little straw basket and a platter of vegetables. You might also want to order keap moo --deep-fried pork skin which looks like Mexican chicarrones --to dip into your nam prik ong. These light-as-air crisps are sold in open markets everywhere in the north.

Because of the cold winters in Thailand’s hilly northern region, richer dishes, especially pork, figure prominently in the cuisine. Chiang Mai, often called the “hog butcher to the nation,” has a reputation for charcuterie. At Chao Nue pork is grilled, deep-fried, braised and, of course, cured in sausages. Try the sai ooah sausage flavored with lemon grass and plenty of garlic. Another good dish is jin bing , which is garlicky marinated, grilled pork.

Most of the foods here are chopped up or cut into morsels and sharply seasoned with what are called “dry curries.” These mixtures are easy to pick up with the sticky rice which absorbs the heat of the spices.

Chao Nue also serves kaeng , or soupy “wet curries.” If you’re lucky, kaeng hung lae will be available. It’s a fabulous long-simmered mixture of pork, spices, slivers of ginger, and whole garlic cloves cooked until they turn soft and sweet. Kaeng hom is a mild red beef curry, and kaeng kae is a strong yellow curry with bitter, pea-sized eggplants; long beans and chicken. Still other curries are kaeng ho made with clear noodles, pork and sour bamboo shoots, and kaeng pakard , dark leafy greens swimming in a tart yellow curry.

Khao soi , a Thai/Burmese-style dish sold around every corner in northern cities, is also served here. It’s a bowlful of fine, flat egg noodles in curry sauce topped with crispy fried noodles.

Ap pla , another intriguing dish, is a compact stack of catfish slices steamed with blazingly hot seasonings on a bed of basil. It emerges from its tight banana leaf wrapping looking like a French terrine.

(Note: Another excellent local restaurant serving northern Thai cooking, including good khao soi , is Viengping, or the V.P. Cafe (4814 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. (213) 663-7079). It specializes in food from the Chiang Mai area, and was reviewed in Calendar Feb. 23.)

Chao Nue (Alisa), 2810 W. 9th Street, Los Angeles. (213) 384-7049 or (213) 487-1927. Park in lot several buildings west of Alisa. Open 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. daily.

In the far southern provinces, where Muslim mosques with gilded domes take the place of Buddhist temples, southern nam prik mixtures are well known for their assertive pungency. This is food that Bangkok Post restaurant writer Ung Aang Talay once dubbed “the limit of phed ness”--as hot as food can possibly get.

Several restaurants in Los Angeles serve a southern dish or two but the best place for ahan pak Thai (southern food) is Satang Thai. There’s no mention of regional dishes on Satang’s printed menu, but at least four southern dishes are available daily, and the Thai patrons in Satang’s dining room always seem to be eating them. The most popular is kaeng leung , an ultra-hot sour curry of catfish and broad slabs of bamboo shoot with fermented overtones. Like most southern Thai kaengs , the heat is not modified with coconut milk. And its flavor is one that even the staunchest chile eaters must adapt to. The same can be said for kaeng tai pla , an explosively seasoned soupy curry made with cashews, vegetables and pickled fish stomach. Between bites, refresh your palate with the raw vegetables that come with the kaengs .

More appealing, perhaps, to Western tastes is pla kabog tod-- pieces of deep-fried, crispy dried fish garnished with fresh chile slices, red onion and lime. Satang’s final southern offering, pad sataw , is a stir-fry of pork, chicken and shrimp with a highly aromatic beanlike vegetable. The advice someone once gave me regarding Limburger cheese, definitely applies to sataw : “If you don’t breathe while you eat it, you’ll love it.”

Many of Satang’s non-southern specialties are excellent. Try the mussels steamed with chile and lemon grass, or naem sohd salad, ground pork with fresh minced herbs, chile, ginger and lime juice sprinkled with roasted peanuts.

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Satang Thai, 8247 Woodman Ave., Panorama City. (818) 989-5637. Open Wednesday through Monday 11 a.m.-10 p.m.

Last summer, Calendar reviewed several restaurants that serve Isaan food, the cooking of Thailand’s northeastern provinces-- the cuisine of the moment in Bangkok. Since then, I’ve found several other Los Angeles Thai restaurants with Isaan dishes on their menus, including B.B.Q. Unlimited. Outside the restaurant a large banner boldly announces, “We have the specialties of Isaan Classic”--a popular Bangkok chain of Isaan- style restaurants. In truth, B.B.Q. Unlimited has only a few dishes from the Isaan Classic repertoire. There is no larb pet (duck salad), for example, or goong ten (the raw, so-called “dancing” shrimp salad). But there are the basics: larb , the chopped beef salad made with large quantities of fresh herbs in a lime-chile dressing, and the requisite sticky rice. Originally, the barbecue here was strictly Chinese. Now the grill is also used for Isaan- style chicken; hao dong , a salad made with grilled liver; and seua rong hai , steak seared, sliced and served rare with a pungent, tart dipping sauce.

Another place with a good sampling of Isaan dishes is Pi Yai in Hollywood. At lunchtime, the beige-and-linoleum decorated cafe next to a 7-Eleven market, is packed with Thais putting away enormous bowls of noodles and platters mounded high with rice and an extraordinary variety of toppings.

Every dish, from the chewy fried Isaan beef to the Chinese-inspired stewed pork hock over rice, explodes with exuberant flavors. And the menu is translated into English. A chat with the owner garnered a checklist of Isaan dishes (numbers 5 through 8 and 13 through 16 on the front page of the menu). Som tam is a blisteringly hot version of shredded green papaya salad, and sup nor mai is a potently flavored, shredded bamboo shoot salad. Deliciously bland by contrast are Yai’s pork satay and barbecued chicken.

Sapp, a Thai luncheonette and coffee shop, has some of the best-tasting Isaan dishes I’ve found outside of the region. Kai yang , Isaan- style barbecued chicken is the specialty. But you may have to do a little work to get an Isaan meal--the dishes aren’t listed in English. However, the cashier patiently translated the list of Isaan dishes and salads for me and what I ate was splendid. First, a perfectly seasoned nam tok , sliced beef salad with ground chiles and fresh herbs, then an uncommon larb of minced squid with an astonishing bright clean spiciness.

B.B.Q. Unlimited, Bangluck Plaza, 12980 Sherman Way, North Hollywood. (818) 765-7725. Open 10 a.m.-10 p.m. daily.

Pi Yai Restaurant, 5757 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, (213) 462-0292. Open Wednesday through Monday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Sapp Coffee Shop, 5183 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 665-1035. Open Thursday through Tuesday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

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Thais keep telling me that life has changed too fast in their country: They visit Bangkok only to find the graceful canals that used to wind through the city covered with asphalt and noisy traffic. A cold gray skyscraper looms where their favorite open market once overflowed with tempting colors and scents. And their children want to eat at McDonald’s in the Amarin shopping center. Progress, they say, has snatched away more genteel times.

Thais with a taste for nostalgia, often recapture their food memories in Los Angeles at Renoo’s Kitchen, a small and rather drab dining room across from the Cathay Market on Beverly Boulevard. Nowhere else in the city can one find as impressive a hot-table spread with intense, earthy colored curries and other ready-to-go dishes. It is reminiscent of neighborhood curry kitchens you still see in many Thai towns.

The offerings rotate throughout the day so you are never sure exactly what will be available. But for $3.25 you get a huge mound of rice and two substantial selections.

Renoo’s daily specials hold even more nostalgic appeal. On Fridays there is mi gati , a favorite with kids; it’s thin rice noodles stir-fried with coconut cream and bean sprouts. Wednesdays Renoo’s serves the famous noodle soup gwaytio Rangsit , named for a Bangkok suburb where vendors once sold it from portable boat kitchens along the klonq (a canal-like waterway). The rich, spicy-beef-and-meatball broth is garnished with pieces of lightly cooked liver (omitted on request) and topped with deep-fried garlic slices, fresh herbs and puffs of pork rind.

Saturday’s specials are gwaytio lod , flat rice noodle sheets with a black mushroom stuffing, and kanom chin nam prik , chewy tapioca noodles with peanut curry. The daily specials are written on the wall in Thai; usually you can get someone to describe them for you.

Mornings, Renoo’s offers comforting Thai breakfasts of rice soup ( khao tom ) or rice porridge ( joke ).

Renoo’s Kitchen, 3960 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 480-8786. Open daily 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

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Sri Siam Cafe is small neighborhood restaurant which tries to please everyone with a varied assortment of regional favorites, just as an American diner might offer Boston baked beans, Texas chili and southern fried chicken.

Some of the best dishes are listed on the blackboard menu of daily specials neatly written in Thai script. The cook translated and described every dish for us. We tried a southern-style rice salad, khao yam , rimmed with little mounds of minced lemon grass, finely-cut fresh lime leaves, grapefruit and various vegetables. You mix all of this up with a sweet dressing sharpened with squeezes of fresh lime and as much powdered chile as you want. That day there was also an intriguing fish roe soup and a lime-chile-dressed salad of carefully peeled Japanese eggplant topped with lean ground pork and fresh coriander.

Many restaurants simply use prepared curry pastes from Thai supermarkets, but Sri Siam’s curries are reminiscent of those from a good Thai home cook. The flavors of freshly crushed herbs, chiles and garlic dance behind the soothing richness of coconut milk. Bangkok Delight, a curry of shrimp, pineapple and coconut milk, may sound like a Hawaiian vacation but it is fabulously pungent and well-balanced. The kaeng keeoh wann , a biting green curry, includes fresh Thai basil and chicken. Request it with eggplant and you’ll get the Thai golf ball-sized variety now grown here.

The printed menu offers quite a few Isaan dishes and sticky rice, called sweet rice here. (Most of Sri Siam’s Isaan dishes are listed under House Specialties and Salads.) Larb , while pungent enough, won’t obliterate your taste buds, especially if you tell the cook how spicy you want it. You can also get excellent nam tok , sliced beef salad with ground chiles and herbs; sup nor mai , sour bamboo salad; and ho dong , a beef liver and tripe salad. For more mild-flavored dishes try the stuffed omelet, or broccoli with garlic and oyster sauce, or the beefy tendon soup.

Sri Siam Cafe, 12843 Vanowen St., North Hollywood, (818) 982-6262. Open Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

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