I’m reviewing all the vegan-friendly Thai restaurants, grocers, coffee shops, and eateries in and around Los Angeles’ Thai Town neighborhood in East Hollywood. This is a work in progress.
Reviewed: Salaya | Pattaya Bay | Obet & Del’s Coffee new | LAcha Somtum | Silom Market | Bulan Thai | Boran Thai | Thai Central Cuisine | Ruen Pair | Thai Patio |
Avoid: Vim Thai, Jitlada, Hollywood Thai, Sanamluang, Amphai, Spicy BBQ
Review Caveats:
- The area includes Thai Town and greater East Hollywood in L.A.
- I fully review only places that have significant vegan options.
- I visit multiple times.
- Scoring overly weights flavor and vegan options.
Salaya
Hollywood Blvd & Kingsley
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
19 chiles
Salaya is the ideal vegan restaurant—almost to a fault. All the dishes are plant-based and conscientiously prepared with wholesomeness down to every detail. Entering Salaya is akin to a spa, immediately placing you at ease and ready for a deep cleanse. The food is utterly fresh; the dinning area is impeccably neat; and the kitchen is spotless. The colorful menu booklet and delightful dishware are picture perfect. The menu features an assortment of Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese dishes. You could eat there every day without boredom and not gain an extra pound. The mock meats are particularly impressive. The curries and other Thai stables are delicately prepared: no greasy noodles and rice, no sugary coconut milk, no sodium overload. The adherence to purity, however, sometimes sacrifices flavor and potency. A bit more Thai grit and piquant are good for the soul.
Pattaya Bay
Vermont & Hollywood Blvd
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
19 chiles
A Thai restaurant that comes with a warning label and refuses to cater to all is tucked away in the fringes of upscale Los Feliz. Pattaya Bay could have abandoned its raison d’être to grab bank from the milquetoast hipsters preening about the local bistros on Vermont Avenue. Instead, the menu preserves Thai classics and incorporates vegan substitutions without bating an eye. The small entrance off a parking lot hides a larger space, including a stage for live music. The wait staff double checks your tolerance for heat, and in the same breath suggests vegan alternatives on and off the menu. Salads, curries, and veggie dishes are well balanced between sauce, spice, and crispness. Located just outside of Thai Town, Pattaya Bay feels like it’s giving the middle finger to Los Feliz. This Thai place knows where it belongs.
Obet & Del’s Coffee
Hollywood Blvd & Harvard
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
19 chiles
Great beans, clean and strong brews, friendly staff, efficient service, pet friendly, and Oatly as the standard milk makes Obet & Del’s the go-to coffee shop in Thai Town. The iced lattes and Americanos are well balanced, not watered down or sugary. The oat ice cream in the affogato al caffè is exceptional. Price points rival big chains, however, and limited pastry selections are mostly non-vegan. The interior design gives retro Montessori school lunchroom, ripe for the influencer class to exploit and hipster clientele to invade. Yet on any given day, Obet & Del’s attracts a mix of people. Come for the excellent coffee — after a few visits, they’ll remember your order — and stay for the communal vibe. Meet a four-legged friend, share ideas with artists and activists, gossip with newcomers, and listen to neighborhood lore from long-time residents.
LAcha Somtum
Hollywood Blvd & Kingsley
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
18 chiles
Excellent dishes across the board. No holds barred on spice levels. Rich inclusion of Thai flavors. Somtum is the real deal and does not dumb it down for tourists. Not all dishes can be made vegan, but the staff are charming and considerate about informing you of vegan options. The food is consistently luscious anytime, including take out. The curries and salads are standouts. The comfy mis-matched seating and long community table feel like an auntie’s living room. The building, however, has chronic HVAC issues; you may encounter blowing fans, electric heaters, or closed doors due to a building maintenance problem.
Silom Supermarket
Hollywood Blvd near Serrano
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
18 chiles
Silom is the grocery store in the neighborhood to find everything, featuring fresh produce and Thai essentials, including Kaffir limes (in season), galanga, and an array of Thai chiles. The frozen section has an amazing assortment of mock meats and seafood that you probably never knew existed (e.g., vegan cuttlefish). Silom carries many imported canned and packaged stables that are vegan-friendly to make your favorite sauces. Be sure to read the fine print on everything; there’s no specific vegan section on the shelves (and Thai goods often have a base of fish sauce). Its noodle aisle is vast, while the rice varieties are limited but high quality. You can usually find vegan take-away “deli” foods and sweet treats. The produce section is small but comprehensive, although occasionally not well stocked. Silom’s staff are proudly not chefs, do not provide language interpretation, nor act as ambassadors of Thai cuisine and culture. But if you do a little homework and come as polite guests, you will find everything you need. Strike up a conversation with aunties shopping in the aisles, and they may share a valuable cooking tip.
Bulan thai
Santa Monica Blvd near Sunset Blvd
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
17 chiles
It’s a stretch to include a restaurant nestled on a curved hill where Santa Monica meets Sunset Blvd as part of Thai Town. But Bulan stretches what can be considered Thai food—without disappointment. The dishes posses little heat and distant connection to their flavor origins. You would be hard pressed to taste kaffir or galanga or a red chile in any meal. Yet the chef masterfully and delicately prepares every item, and the crispy rice and dumplings are local legends for a reason. I was attracted to Bulan for the purely plant-based menu and left delighted if slightly confused. Perhaps the adorable restaurant suffers from its proximity to the imposing Erewhon across the street. Bulan’s marriage of Thai food to a certain kind of earnest vegetarianism results in a beautiful, if anachronistic, culinary experience.
Boran Thai
Hollywood Blvd & Serrano
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
16 chiles
Boran is the little shop around the corner with promise. Recently expanded into the store next door, Boran is growing but hasn’t lost its take-out atmosphere. The menu is simple, tasty, and doesn’t try to impress. The noodle dishes and curries will keep you coming back, as well as the reasonable price tag. The friendly staff are ready to receive “make it vegan”, but you may need to be specific about ingredients. The spice level base is quite mild, and I’ve had to ask for a chile tray to up it a notch. On any given Tuesday night, you’ll find a family sharing a pot, a yuppie couple with their dog, workers grabbing a quick bite after exiting the Metro, lost tourists enjoying a respite, and regulars chatting and watching a sports game. Boran serves as everyone’s kitchen table.
Thai Central Cuisine
Hollywood Blvd & Hobart
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
15 chiles
Thai Central Cuisine refers to the region in Thailand, not its location in the heart of the Thailand Plaza strip mall on Hollywood Blvd. The food is very good but no extraordinary stand outs. The plate presentation is lovely, portions modest, and flavors on point. The prices are above the average, and only select items are (or can be made) vegan. The spice level is low, but they provide nine hot sauce varieties (which you can take home), instead of the often recycled chile tray. I love the warm blue and wood interior—and even warmer staff. I never feel rushed or bothered by obsequious attention. It’s a comfortable place to hang, a reprieve from the tightly packed tables or “dinning hall” rows of the restaurants next door. Overall, Thai Central Cuisine falls somewhere in the middle—and so is aptly named.
Ruen Pair
Hollywood Blvd & Hobart
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
13 chiles
Since the media buzz around Ruen Pair’s 30th anniversary, the lines have been long at this neighborhood staple. Capitalizing on fame usually compels restauranteurs to cater to broad, mediocre tastes. To Ruen Pair’s credit, the hype hasn’t changed the menu—it remains average. You can engage in effortless “make it vegan” discussions with the nicely informed wait staff, but sometimes the kitchen has difficulty making the translation. The heat level is inconsistent, regardless of your request. The dishes are tasty but disproportionate: too much salt in the curry but not enough in the papaya salad, stingy with the rice yet served a mountain of cabbage. While the newfound attention hasn’t impacted the food, Eastside hipsters and affluent Westsiders converge on the small restaurant on the weekends, upsetting the quiet charm of the fish tank dinning room. The cash-only, no-frills community feeling has been usurped by date-night scene stealers waving their Apple Pay. A meal at Ruen Pair is fine, but now it comes with a Hollywood spotlight.
Thai Patio
Hollywood Blvd & Hobart
Flavor & Menu
Vegan-ability
Quality, Consistency & Value
Service & Atmosphere
12 chiles
Thai Patio was on my regular rotation for years in large part due to the partially-enclosed patio seating—a great spot for Hollywood Blvd people watching. The friendly staff never batted an eye when I asked about making dishes vegan and anticipated my needs on return visits. Over time, the staff turned over, the menu declined, and the patio has seen better days. Much of the dishes are now “pre-mixed” (say goodbye to vegan papaya salad and curries). Several sides appear to be out of the box from the frozen food aisle, and other items on the menu are no longer available. The noodle dishes are solid, and the tofu portions are generous. I especially love their tray of various chiles. But I yearn for the earlier days when the waiters chatted with you over ingredients, the patio was useable, and the plant-based plates were abundant. It’s reasonable food for a reasonable price served on a reasonably sturdy patio table.
Avoid:
- Hollywood Thai (Hollywood & Harvard): First visit, wrong dishes were served cold. Second visit, vegan options were flavorless and undercooked. Third visit, we were ignored for 15 minutes, and we left unnoticed.
- Jitlada (Sunset & Harvard): It’s famous, always crowded, and extraordinarily expensive. The menu is not vegan-friendly, and what remains are syrupy sweet, bland, and oily curries and noodles.
- Vim Thai (Hollywood & Winona): It’s all meat and seafood on the expansive menu. You’ll struggle requesting any vegan alternatives and be disappointed with the results.
- Sanamluang Cafe (Hollywood & Kingsley): Few vegan options and no ability/interest in making alternatives.
- Roasted Duck by Pa Ord (Hollywood & Winona): Need I say more.
- Amphai Northern Thai (Sunset & Serrano): Quaint cafe with a select daily menu that is rarely vegan.
- Spicy BBQ Northern Thai Food (Normandie & Santa Monica): The vegan options are greasy slop with no “spicy”.