This Charming Thai Restaurant Serves 11 Kinds Of Khao Soi Noodles

While there are a few spots in Los Angeles where you can get khao soi noodles, there's one Northern Thai restaurant that's really running with the idea by offering 11 different, piping hot bowls of it.

Khao Soi by Inthanon Thai, which sits on Hollywood Boulevard, just a few blocks west from the bustling Thai Town, is from the people behind Inthanon Thai Cuisine in Valley Village. It's a hip and cozy little joint with wood paneling throughout, colorful streamers and paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and vibrant flowery plates and a metal sign that says "HOME" adorning the walls.

As the name of the recently opened restaurant suggests, they feature khao soi, the Northern Thai-style egg noodle curry-coconut soup as their main dish. Theirs is served with a boiled egg and topped with a nest of fried egg noodles. When you get your khao soi, the friendly waitstaff also brings out a little sauce dish that has a wedge of lime and pickled mustard greens and shallots. Make sure to squeeze the juice in—it perfectly complements the flavorful and complex thinner-style curry soup base—and add the pickled veggies to taste.

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Spicy khao soi noodles with sai quo sausage (Photo by Jean Trinh/LAist)
As for the 11 different khao soi bowls you can choose from, they all have the same soup base (though you can ask for varying spice levels) with different main ingredients, from crispy pork to fried tofu and braised beef. I visited the restaurant during dinner and tried the white meat chicken one, which comes out tender and juicy.

While we can get expertly made khao soi noodles at Pok Pok LA, Night + Market and Pailin, it's still a welcoming addition to neighborhood, and not something you see on every L.A. Thai restaurant menu. Khao Soi also serves up items worth trying like their Pasta Sai Oua, which uses fried slices of the spicy Northern Thai herb sausage, sai oua. It's a stir-fried noodle dish with slices of bell peppers and onions, and has that smoky wok flavor you get from Chinese and Thai restaurants.

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Pasta Sai Oua from Khao Soi (Photo by Jean Trinh/LAist)
While the Khao Chee Tod, a deep-fried sticky rice ball appetizer, seems promising, it ends up being rather bland and dry. As much as I want to top each bite with the sliced green onions and crispy batter pieces that fall from the rice balls, it's still a lot of work trying to put that all together, and doesn't do enough to add to the taste.

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Khao Chee Tod at Khao Soi (Photo by Jean Trinh/LAist)
Though, if you want a starter dish and you're a fan of Nam Khao Tod, we recommend that one. It's like a papaya salad in terms of the fish-sauce dressing, peanuts and chili, but more ginger-heavy with sour pork slices and deep-fried rice, giving it that extra crunchy texture. Every time we go to a Thai restaurant, we can't help but order Nam Khao Tod, and Khao Soi's version measures up.

If you get it spicy, you can wash that down with one of their three different-flavored sodas—in lychee, pineapple or strawberry—that they mix themselves and serve in cute mason jars.

Khao Soi by Inthanon Thai, 5907 Hollywood Blvd., Thai Town; (323) 464-1790