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Sala Bua, at the far-eastern reach of the Chinatown Mall in the space that housed the late Tao Ran Ju, has a menu of familiar Ameri-Thai standards (crab Rangoon, pad thai, etc), but it’s also been getting some attention for being upfront about serving a lot of things non-Thais used to have to ferret out on so-called secret menus; things like Isan sausage, spicy raw shrimp with fish sauce (goong chae nam pla), and four varieties of papaya salad (with dried shrimp, raw blue crab, salted crab, or pickled fish).
- Mike Sula
- Palo
But I went in with the excessively hopeful hypothesis that maybe some of the more Chinese-rooted dishes would be a degree or two better than at most places—especially khao man gai, the Thai version of Hainanese chicken. A steamed or boiled bird resting on a pile of schmaltzy, garlicky, chicken-saturated rice, it’s a rarity outside southeast Asia, rarer still when done well. You won’t find that here either. The rice is plenty garlicky, but arid and devoid of lipids, just like the chicken itself. Another Chinese-ish dish, moo palo (here just palo), a stew of five-spiced-pork belly and boiled egg, is skimpy on the meat and so sweet you could pour it over ice cream.
- From la-mian.
