The Times' Restaurant of the Year gives us a perfect model.
award in typical humble fashion. “Honestly, the thing I said the very first night [I heard] this great news was, ‘You should give it to someone else,’” he told the crowd after I had the honor of presenting him the award chosen by restaurant critic Bill Addison. “Give it to Antico. Give it to someone great. I have fridges in the dining room. I have propane tanks in the women’s restroom. The A/C doesn’t work. My fryer is 21 years old.
Certainly after ordering in the restaurant’s doorway and being directed to a table in the alley, there are those who, upon being handed plastic cups with one of the restaurant’s selections of natural wines — it works with some 230 winemakers — might wonder if they are in the right place. But if you have come for one of Anajak’s Thai Taco Tuesdays, the seduction quickly begins as the sun starts to set and the tables fill with an energetic L.A.
My meals at Anajak Thai have got me thinking about what makes a great Los Angeles restaurant. When I used to report on restaurants for this paper in the 1990s, I would talk to young chefs like Octavio Becerra and Fred Eric about their dreams of bringing the flavors and ingredients from the many cuisines blooming in and around Los Angeles into fine dining.
Pichetrungsi certainly isn’t the first restaurant kid to take over the family restaurant and make changes to the menu. It’s an old tradition. But there’s something so right — and so Los Angeles — about the way he’s gone about it. For one thing, on most weekdays you can still eat at Anajak — one of the first Thai restaurants in the San Fernando Valley — as a neighborhood restaurant.
But when Pichetrungsi gave up his career as an artist for Disney to return to the restaurant after his father had a stroke, he brought his Los Angeles-bred high-low sensibilities to the family business with Thai Taco Tuesdays as well as a sophisticated omakase menu served on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s almost impossible to get a seat for the omakase meals, which makes Anajak simultaneously one of the most exclusive and democratic restaurants in Los Angeles.
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