You'd need all your fingers and toes to count the number of Thai restaurants in Orange County, but up until a few weeks ago you only needed only one: Vientiane. There may be Thai restaurants and markets that offer a smattering of Laotian dishes, but Vientiane is it if you want to have your Lao food with the traditional sticky glutinous rice served in a stout basket of woven reeds.
Now there's another, a place that just opened called Spicy Lao, which, like Vientiane, is also in Garden Grove.
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From what I saw of the menu, Spicy Lao's offering is small and concise with just ten dishes. Among them is deep fried Lao jerky, a coconut curry noodle soup called mee-ka-tee, and sai kok, homemade Lao sausage with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves.
They opened a few weeks ago and have a few specials going on, including a free Thai iced tea per person when you dine in. And yes, with the meal, they do serve traditional sticky glutinous rice in those reed baskets.
Check them out here:
Spicy Lao's Instagram feed
Spicy Lao's Facebook Page
http://www.spicylao.com
8851 Garden Grove Blvd Suite 113, Garden Grove, CA 92844
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.