Laos in Town - Chef Ben Tiatasin's Laotian at 3rd and K Street NE in NoMA

[lotus125]

New Laotian restaurant in NoMa.  After several visits, I'd rate this place as "ok."  First the good parts: Big outdoor space; beautiful dining room; Laotian food is interesting and -- other than Thip Khao and related restaurants -- uncommon around DC; and the crispy rice salad is delicious (even if not as good as the one at Thip Khao).  Unfortunately there are many downsides.  Service is spotty at best.  I've had several meals where we desperately tried to flag down servers, dishes were forgotten, water was never refilled, etc.  The cocktails are so-so and often taste quite watered down -- maybe too much use of quickly melting ice?  And other than the crispy rice salad, the food has been mixed.  I've generally liked items on the vegan menu.  A whole branzino was solid.  Grilled beef and pork were both overcooked.  Steamed catfish was so so.  I love having another Laotian option in DC, and I hope this place improves. But it needs a lot of work.  

[mongo jones]

to back you up a bit, here's my report on my blog on our dinner at laos in town exactly three weeks ago. we liked the food fine---especially after two meals in a row featuring heavy meat dishes and fried food---but nothing really jumped out. service was not good. but i'd still recommend it to people visiting from places where there are no lao restaurants.

in my write-up i actually spend more time wondering about the question about why/how it is that dc has more lao restaurants than the twin cities even though the twin cities has twice the lao population.

[DonRocks]

5 hours ago, mongo jones said:

in my write-up i actually spend more time wondering about the question about why/how it is that dc has more lao restaurants than the twin cities even though the twin cities has twice the lao population.

DC is a Laozi food town - you should ask him.

[mongo jones]

him?

[DonRocks]

5 minutes ago, mongo jones said:

him?

Unless you know something I don't!

[mongo jones]

oh, you're referring to a member here.

[DonRocks]

1 minute ago, mongo jones said:

oh, you're referring to a member here.

We're well-established, but not quite that old.

[sandynva]

we had some great carryout from there this weekend. because it was our first visit, we played it a bit safe and mostly ordered dishes we know and like at Thip Khao.

The crispy rice salad is great. i love this at thip khao too, but the two salads are different. the version here is less herby and coconutty, but more crispy, savory and sour. I'm not sure which version I like better. I'm not sure if the vegan laab we got was mistakenly missing tofu or if it just had a very small amount of tofu, but either way what we recieved was mostly mushrooms with red onions, in a good tangy dressing. the dressing was good but i wished there was more tofu. I prefer Thip Khao's. On the other hand, the Orm was really good, and much better than the version at Thip Khao, which i find too bland. The Orm here has a nice sour flavor and lots of dill. The Mieng Kana Tofu was wonderful, and I believe they do a shrimp version of this as well. The combination of soft fresh broccoli leaf, slippery rice noodles, crispy tofu and a fantastic herbal sauce is so complex in flavor and texture, it's great. 

Overall the dishes are significantly smaller than at thip khao, but the prices are smaller too. the person taking my order and bringing me my food was very nice and the place was pretty. 

[DonRocks]

I got the Mok Pla ($14) today, and I can't remember ever having had better catfish (or basa fish) in the DC area.

This is a lovely restaurant, and worthy of their Bib Gourmand.

Here’s their current menu:

[eatruneat]

Had a good takeout experience at Laos in Town last weekend. Crispy rice salad and sun dried beef were favorites. @MichaelBDC liked his Laab Moo enough but preferred the other versions we have had, especially at Beau Thai. Northern noodle was also great option and reminded me of the Khao Soi Gai I've had at Baan Thai. Carryout was done through their patio window and was very efficient. 

[Bart]

I went here on Sunday night for the first time and liked it, but I'm not sure I ordered the "right" things.  Part of that was due to my lack of research up front and part was due to staffing shortages and inexperienced servers.  And maybe my expectations were too high.  I keep waiting for the mind and pallet blowing experience of my first visit to the now defunct Bangkok Golden* in Baileys Crossroads, but nothing has lived up.  Not sure if it's my faulty memory or that I have a lot more experience with that cuisine so it's no longer surprising and unique.  (* Padeak is there now  https://www.padaekdc.com/ )

We started with SEEN HANG - sun dried beef, Sriracha sauce 9 - This was thin strips of beef, maybe pinky finger sized with a sweet hot dipping sauce.  It was a good dish but not as exciting as I hoped.

We wanted to get one of the salads and our server had good things to say about all of them so we went with the signature salad: LIT SIGNATURE SALAD - papaya, green bean, Lao eggplant, tomato, rice noodle, pork loaf, beansprout, pork rind 12.  (LIT stand for Laos In Town)  This was listed as "PHET", which I didn't notice or realize that it meant "spicy" (I'm used to looking for the little pepper icons).  Anyhow, this dish was hot, and I mean HOT!!!!!  I'm generally impervious to heat/spice in dishes and always ask for things to be "Thai hot" or whatever, but this dish was insanely hot!  I could see it being an evening-ending dish for some people!!  I'm tempted to go back and reorder it just to see if someone when a little nuts with the heat in the kitchen that night or if this is the normal level of heat from the dish.

For the main we split the SUKI glass noodle, shrimp, crispy squid, Napa cabbage, Asian watercress, cilantro, chili sesame sauce 18.  This was a very good and tasty dish, but the squid was huge and if you didn't know better, you'd think they were large onion rings!  It wasn't bad, it just looked "weird".  But again, that may be due to my lack of familiarity.  But this was the best and most interesting dish of the night.

I'd like to go back and explore more of the menu.

Does anyone remember the name of the place that was here before?  I have a memory of higher end burger/pizza place with the name of the chef in the title.  Something like:  CMB - Charles Murray Burgers

 

[DonRocks]

38 minutes ago, Bart said:

Does anyone remember the name of the place that was here before?  I have a memory of higher end burger/pizza place with the name of the chef in the title.  Something like:  CMB - Charles Murray Burgers

TD Burger (Timothy Dean) 

[Ericandblueboy]

6 hours ago, Bart said:

I keep waiting for the mind and pallet blowing experience of my first visit to the now defunct Bangkok Golden* in Baileys Crossroads

 

Padaek is the renamed BGIII.  It's the same owner.  The mom did move to Thip Khao and the son took over Padaek, but I haven't seen any difference in quality or flavor.  Unfortunately Steve and I found out they're take-out only for now.

[Bart]

Yep, thanks for that Eric.  I knew all of that except the take-out only part.  I learned it the hard way last friday when I was in the area and tried to stop by for lunch.  😕

[weezy]

On 1/4/2022 at 5:00 PM, Ericandblueboy said:

Padaek is the renamed BGIII.  It's the same owner.  The mom did move to Thip Khao and the son took over Padaek, but I haven't seen any difference in quality or flavor.  Unfortunately Steve and I found out they're take-out only for now.