Memories of crispy rice salads past

Bottom-of-the-bowl crispy rice salad, respect for the pupu platter, “a very tender coconut” and Skechers cuisine. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Getting crispy

Crispy rice salad at Night + Market Sahm in Venice.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

We pulled into the North Hollywood parking lot lit up with beer signs from a liquor store that sells michelada mix in chile-rimmed Styrofoam cups and tall boy cans of Modelo. I easily found a spot in front of our destination, a Thai restaurant recommended by a trustworthy eater and friend. I looked into the brightly lit dining room and thought, “I’ve been here before.”

Of course, it’s been a while, maybe 10 years, since I’ve eaten at Sri Siam.

There was a period in my married life with Jonathan Gold, this paper’s restaurant critic until his 2018 death, when we regularly came to North Hollywood for Thai food. Jonathan never got around to writing the comprehensive guide to Valley Thai food he’d been planning, but we ate well doing the research and Sri Siam was one of his favorites, a place he mentioned often along with Krua Thai.

The years seem to have been good to Sri Siam. Not only does it appear to do a healthy take-out business, it attracts customers from all over L.A. The night I was there the women at the next table were making plans to meet friends at a club in Echo Park and several young TV writers at a big table kept exclaiming about how delicious — and affordable — the food was.

A whole trout, which came to the table covered in herbs and crisp bits of garlic, ginger and lemongrass, would have been worth the trip. But it was the crispy rice salad that caught my attention and had me wondering why I’ve stayed away from Sri Siam so long.

In a 2006 conversation for KCRW with Evan Kleiman, Jonathan said Sri Siam made “an almost perfect version” of crispy rice salad.

“It’s one of those dishes that I always say powers you to the bottom of the bowl,” Jonathan told Kleiman. “Because every bite is good but you’re always searching for the perfect bite. The one that has just enough peanut and just enough scallion enough of the rice and a little piece of the [sausage]. ... And before you know if you can see yourself at the bottom of the plate.”

Not long after I was at Sri Siam, I found myself at another great Thai restaurant I’ve been missing: Night + Market Sahm in Venice. There’s a wonderful precision in the jolts of spice and citrus in Kris Yenbamroong’s cooking (also at Night + Market Song in Silver Lake and Night + Market Weho) served with well-chosen natural wines. I still love the pastrami kee mao and fried chicken thighs. But it was the crispy rice salad that got my attention once more. I love how the springy sour sausage plays off the crisp rice and splashes of chile and lime. With four of us at the table looking for the perfect bite, the bottom of the plate came fast.

Consider the pupu platter

California’s tiki bars and tiki drinks have gone in and out of style for decades. The most recent resurgence, emerging from the craft cocktail movement, seems fueled by a desire to preserve history while also adding context to that complicated history with acknowledgments of cartoonish cultural appropriation. Danielle Dorsey, Sarah Mosqueda and Tiffany Tse put together a guide to the best places in Southern California for tiki drinks, from bars that have been around for decades to newer places refining tiki classics. Cooking columnist Ben Mims went a step further by looking at the often dismissed food served with the cocktails.

“Unlike tiki drinks, which have been updated with fresh juices, less sugar and more high-quality rums and booze, the food either stagnated or nearly vanished completely,” he wrote in the cover story for this Sunday’s Weekend section. “Where menus used to be filled with pupu platters and coconut-crusted nibbles, now they list hamburgers, chicken tenders, fried calamari and other staples of sports bars and pubs.”

Mims not only sought out the origins of tiki food — much of which goes back to often unacknowledged Chinese chefs — he came up with recipes that will make you reconsider crab rangoon and “coco” fried shrimp.

The coconut’s journey

(Fangyu Ma / For The Times)

A beautiful story from Paola Briseño-Gonzalez tells us how the coconut — and the fermented coconut tree sap tuba — came to Mexico via the Acapulco-Manila trade route starting in 1565, how the coquero or coconut man she remembers from her childhood was an expert at finding coco muy tiernito, or “a very tender coconut,” and how coconuts became such a beloved ingredient in Mexico’s coastal cuisine. Plus, she has recipes: Coconut-Habanero Fish Ceviche With Poached Shrimp, Coco Limonada, and Coconut Raspado With Jammy Plums.

Also ...

• Jenn Harris on plant-based restaurants she’s been eating at.
• Stephanie Breijo with the week’s restaurant news, including details about izakaya pop-up Budonoki finding a permanent spot in Hollywood.
• And finally, your week shouldn’t end without reading Lucas Kwan Peterson’s review of Skechers Food Spot, the improbable food court at a Skechers shoe outlet.