With three branches on the southern edge of the San Fernando Valley — one in NoHo, one in Valley Village, one in Sherman Oaks (and none of them on Ventura Boulevard!) — the oddly named Rustic Spoon (14845 Burbank Blvd., Sherman Oaks, 818-855-1718; 4384 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, 818-754-8998; 12500 Magnolia Blvd., Valley Village, 818-358-3736; www.rusticspoon.info) sounds like a breakfast place, not a destination for pad Thai. But it has grown into a popular and busy destination for takeout orders of chicken satay and green papaya salad.
Indeed, sitting in the Burbank Boulevard branch, just east of the 405, I saw a lot more locals showing up for food to-go than joining me at one of the handful of tables. Which was fine, for as far as I’m concerned, COVID is still with us, and will be for a while. And I’m happy to do my eating with a minimal number of diners around me.
That said, I’m also happy to do my eating in a restaurant where on a Saturday night they’re serving the dishes I had my heart set on — tuna tartare and flash-fried ahi tuna salad. But I was told, sorry, no tuna tonight. Which was the bad news. The better news was, when it comes to Thai food, there’s always something good to eat.
In this case, that included the above-mentioned chicken satay, with a tasty small cucumber salad, and a good peanut sauce for dipping — a dish that always satisfies. So does the aforementioned pad Thai, in this case made with chicken, beef, tofu or shrimp.
The menu is short for a Thai restaurant — just half a dozen curries or so. But there’s enough. What there is, is done well — tasty Hainanese crispy fried chicken, good curry noodles, fine chicken larb. Not a lot of glitz. But a lot of flavor.
In the midst of the sundry Rustic Spoons, there’s the wonderfully named Monster Thai (12920 Riverside Drive, Sherman Oaks; 818-990-5206, www.monsterthaicuisine.com) — a tiny restaurant I like for the wall art alone (an amazing collection of gold and platinum records, by legends that include The Beach Boys and The Beatles).
At Monster, the menu goes on and on…and on. From Monster Munchies (13 of them!), through Monster Soups, Monster Green Garden (11 salads!), a whole page of Monster Main Dishes, along with Monster Vegetarian, Monster Curries, Monster Noodles, Monster Rice and my favorite section — Monster Open Fire, which is where you’ll find barbecue chicken, barbecue pork, salmon teriyaki and a beef dish called “Tiger Cry.” (There are Monster Sides too, Monster Desserts and Monster Drinks!)
The choices are so many that you’ll be glad to be there with a good eater, and a heavy fork, as you decide whether to get the red curry, the yellow curry, the green curry, the Panang curry or the pineapple curry, with chicken beef, pork, tofu, shrimp, seafood or vegetables. The vegetable and tofu options continue in the noodle dishes and the rice dishes.
Add on the Monster Vegetarian section, and you’ve got a restaurant that has lots of options for carnivores — and lots for vegetarians too. And good for them for that.
And even “gooder” for My Thai (21714 Devonshire St., Chatsworth; 818-341-7002, www.mythai818.com), which manages the somewhat excellent mix of being both a Thai vegan restaurant, and a Thai seafood restaurant, both at the same time. This may make My Thai sui generis among our many (many!) Siamese options.
Though actually, the description of the restaurant as vegan and seafood is a bit of an overstatement. The first 82 dishes on the menu are vegan, followed by seven seafood dishes. Seafood is almost an afterthought on the menu. Though there is a snappy sweet and sour fish, and a properly complex seafood curry, with fish, shrimp and scallops in a red curry sauce.
The rest of the menu is built around soy approximations of meat — soy beef, soy duck, soy shrimp, vegan crab and so forth. My relationship with vegetarian cognates is…polite. But shrimp is always better if it’s…shrimp. The good news is, there are more than enough dishes that don’t pretend to be anything they’re not. I like vegetables. Vegetables are our friends.
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.
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