It was very quiet here midday, with one table doubling as a tutoring/homework desk, and another table, occupied by a family, emitting some seriously delicious-smelling steam. The whole restaurant smelled delicious, really. Like fish sauce and herbs. We ordered beef loklak over fried rice and fish porridge, plus a couple of smoothies. They came out in that order. I thought that was a little weird at first, until I tasted the smoothies and discovered that their pastel candy-hue reflected exactly how they tasted: artificial fruit flavors. I guess they were meant for dessert… not that that excuses a Southeast Asian restaurant for not using real fruit. I mean, real fruit iced smoothies are a given over there, to the point where you can’t walk a block without seeing a street stall stacked with sliced fruit. The fish porridge was, well, it was grains of rice floating in water. Just way too watery for me. The overall flavor was ‘hot water’, and even though there were dried shrimps scattered throughout, they just added texture. In the image on the menu, I thought there would be fried onions or ginger or something; if there were, I couldn’t taste them. The beef loklak tasted completely different from the Vietnamese version(bo luc lac) but it wasn’t bad. The texture of the beef cubes reminded me of meat prepared rolled in rice flour or crushed rice, and it wasn’t terribly distinctive until I poured the peppery, vinegary, citrusy dipping sauce over the plate. It came with a hot bowl of beefy broth with the requisite marrow-filled bone in the center. I love marrow and I scraped all of it out with the end of a chopstick!
Matthew L.
Place rating: 4 Los Angeles, CA
after a festive night of drinking and reggae concert down in long beach my buddy and I got a bit hungry. We walked around and found this Cambodian restaurant open at 3 am. There were a few customers left in there doing the Karaōke thing and so we took the chance and asked if the kitchen was still open. The owner Jonathan Dok replied as to why we were out so late. We told him we were at the reggae concert over by the queen marry. He opened the door welcome us in. Before we had sat down his beautiful wife had already place two ice cold glass of water on the table. The place looks like a whole in the wall. But the service was excellent and the food was like mom would cook. God I love these whole in the wall places I saw the cook and it was an little old Asian lady powing the wok. The rice was steaming and so did the dishes that came out of the kitchen, we finished off the meal with a nice soup and after the meal the owner Jonathan introduced himself to us and we all had a wonderful conversation about his business and the neighborhood that its in. He had told us he’s very much involved in his Cambodian community and does many functions with the older citizens but has a harder time with the younger crowd because of what he calls«wanting the fast life». I had a great time and wonderful conversation and hope Mr. Dok many more years and hope you’ll keep up with your involvement in your community. But keep the good food coming.
