Location #1: Luv2Eat Thai Restaurant
Address: 6660 W. Sunset Blvd, Hollywood
Hours: 11 a.m. – midnight, minus 3:30-4:30
Dishes to try: crying tiger beef, larb, Hat Yai fried chicken, Phuket style crab curry kanomjeanLocation #2: Mashti Malone’s
Address: 1525 N La Brea Ave, Hollywood
Hours: 11 a.m. – 11:30 p.m., open till midnight on Fri/Sat
Dishes to try: saffron pistachio ice cream, rosewater sorbet
Angelenos aren’t fond of Hollywood’s tourist-trap intersection, Hollywood and Highland—whether it’s the dirty Walk of Fame, the annoying tourists or the perpetual traffic nightmare. This seedy reputation has infected our perception (perhaps rightly so) of the immediate area, but a brisk walk away is one of LA’s best Thai restaurants and a lovely Persian ice cream spot. Beat back your pre-conceived notions and check out my personal one-two punch for dinner and dessert in Hollywood.
Tucked away in a typically anonymous strip mall off Sunset and Las Palmas is Luv2eat Thai. You’re forgiven for being skeptical of a restaurant whose name sounds like if hashtags existed in the 90s. And Luv2eat is indeed located west of Thai Town proper. Don’t fret. One look at the Chef’s Specials and a whiff of the food at your fellow patron’s tables and you’ll realize this isn’t your average American-friendly Thai joint.
Yes, Luv2eat Thai has drunken noodles on the menu. No disrespect to the joys of pad see ew or drunken noodles, but it is my recommendation that you branch out of your average fare. Their true star dishes are ones you may not recognize by name—regional specialities with names I can’t hope to pronounce made with both flair and care.
If you’re seeking an appetizer, crying tiger beef will do the trick. The beef is savory and chewy in just the right way, but the sauce is the MVP here. The sauce is a savory, spicy mix with a kick of lime citrus. The sauce works better than you’d expect with the tender strips of marinated beef. It’s actually quite addictive.
- Larb at Luv2eat (courtesy of Luv2eat’s online takeout menu and yes, they do takeout)
A good alternative to the Crying Tiger Beef is their larb. Larb is a refreshing, summery salad dish; ground pork, crunchy lettuce, and zesty onion pieces are tossed into a cooling, smooth mix of fish sauce, lime and other spices. The taste is not far off from the crying tiger, so I’d suggest picking only one to let your other dish contrast more sharply.
- Hat Yai Fried Chicken at Luv2eat
What about your main dish? Remember, you have an opportunity with this food pilgrimage to try something different from your usual paid thai. Have fun with it—you really can’t go wrong. One dish keeps pulling me back to Luv2eat: their Hat Yai Fried Chicken. It’s a lightly fried, Southern Thai style chicken topped with crispy, fried shallots with nearby sticky rice and a mostly sweet, a smidge spicy chili sauce. I like layering the sticky rice and shallots onto my bite of chicken, with a nice coat of the sauce. The interplay of the sweet, soft rice against the hard shallots and the eternal pleasures of a fried chicken will leave you swooning. Eat your heart out, Chick-fil-A literally up the street.
- Mango and sticky rice dessert at Luv2eat
The LA food blog scene worships at the altar of another signature dish at Luv2eat: the Phuket style crab curry kanomjean. To quote their menu, the dish is “Vermicelli rice noodle with blue crab, crab meat curry…hard boiled egg, pickle carrot & papaya.” Yummy. Alas, I need to re-try this dish. The server will ask you how spicy you want a given dish. I usually play it safe in spite of my high tolerance, but this time opted for it as spicy as can be. They warn you of their spicy level on the menu. I loved the taste whenever I could detect it between survival slurps of water and fanning my tongue like a dying fire. You should still try it, but be warned of spiciness and stay smart.
Your belly’s full. You’re surprised at Luv2eat’s price being so reasonable for such high quality Thai food. You like my food blog for recommending there. Now you want dessert. Now you certainly couldn’t have gone wrong with Luv2eat’s sticky rice with mango or a jaunt back to Thai Town for the Thai dessert shop Bhan Kanom Thai (let that be another review). But we’re sticking to Hollywood and mixing it up. And just around the corner off La Brea just north of Sunset is Mashti Malone’s.
Mashti Malone’s, like your first destination, is in an otherwise inconspicuous strip mall. Yup, right there, next to the liquor store and the dive bar. Mashti is a local institution and been around since 1980. They are more than your average ice cream parlor—their specialty is various Persian ice cream flavors. Saffron pistachio, creamy rosewater, orange blossom sorbet—the list is endless.
- Rosewater and lavendar ice cream at Mashti Malone’s
Their ice cream’s properties—the creaminess, the texture, and the temperature—are always perfectly calibrated. They also serve the more traditional flavors of an American ice cream shop, such as cookies and cream and mint chip. While yes, you’re coming for Persian ice cream, it is fun to mix an American and Persian flavor together. May I suggest cookies and cream with saffron pistachio?
Outside of the ice cream, they also serve sorbets. Their sorbets also differ from your usual sorbet—once more unique flavors and texture. The rosewater sorbet, for example, features rice starch noodles inside it which adds a crunchy taste to your usual sorbet. Some people like it, others are put off by crunch in their sorbet. The friendly servers will let you sample aplenty.
I hope by now your belly is full and coasting on Thai food and Iranian ice cream. There’s even more places in Hollywood’s various strip malls…but I sure hope you’re full by now. If not, the overcrowded In-N-Out is always right off Sunset, you heathen.