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Like the Thai-Cambodian restaurants of Long Beach’s Cambodia Town, Kop Jai Lai — one of the few Laotian restaurants in SoCal — opts to add a lot of Thai dishes to its menu, to make it more user friendly to those unfamiliar with the cooking of this land-locked land surrounded by Vietnam, Thailand, China and Myanmar (Burma).

It’s actually reminiscent of how early Thai restaurants were Chinese-Thai, because back then, we knew our chow mein, but pad Thai was a mystery. It sure isn’t anymore.

And indeed, the cooking of Laos isn’t a mystery either, not after eating several decades of Thai cooking. There are points of difference, of course, many of them subtleties not obvious to the casual eater. (As I often point out, nationalities may recognize borders and boundaries, but cuisine never does.)

So, for instance, at Kop Jai Lai there are two papaya salads on the menu — one Thai, the other Laotian. The Thai version is a bit sweeter, flavored with dried shrimp and peanuts. The Laotian is more sour, more astringent, with the more intense mouth hit that comes from black crab paste, sour plums, and a fermented fish sauce called padeak. They’re both familiar to those of us who have eaten (and adored) papaya salad for years. But the Thai version is more familiar. And honestly, without the smattering of chopped peanuts, the salad seems to be missing something I’m so accustomed to. Understated…but still there.

What’s added to the menu — the singular ingredient that really sets Laotian cooking apart — is sticky rice. Laos has the highest consumption of sticky rice in the world, eating 377 pounds per person annually. That’s more than a pound of sticky rice per person per day, which is staggering.

According to Wikipedia, “Sticky rice is deeply ingrained in the culture, religious tradition and national identity of Laos. It is a common belief within the Lao community that no matter where they are in the world, sticky rice will always be the glue that holds the Lao communities together…the Lao will refer to themselves as luk khao niaow, which can be translated as ‘children or descendants of sticky rice.’”

And it’s one of the three defining dishes — along with papaya salad and the chopped meat dish called larb, which like the papaya salad is flavored with fish sauce.

At Kop Jai Lai, there are two papaya salads on the menu – one Thai, the other Laotian. This Laotian version is more sour than the other. (Photo by Merrill Shindler)

Lao chicken stew at Kop Jai Lai in Mission Hills (Photo by Merrill Shindler)

Pork sticky rice at Kop Jai Lai in Mission Hills (Photo by Merrill Shindler)

Fried pork side dish at Kop Jai Lai in Mission Hills (Photo by Merrill Shindler)

In a North San Fernando Valley shopping mall, Kop Jai Lai is a warm, cozy Southeast Asian restaurant, with a very helpful staff, and a sizable local following. (Photo by Merrill Shindler)

Interestingly, when I walked into the restaurant, I noticed a long tables of about a dozen regulars, eating a mountain of dishes. I asked them which Lao dish they couldn’t live without. They told me the khao poon curry chicken, which is a big stew pot of chicken in yellow curry paste, coconut milk, potatoes, carrots, vermicelli noodles, cabbage and bean sprouts. They were eating it over sticky rice. Of course.

Kop Jai Lai sits in a Mission Hills strip mall, that’s dominated by Clean King, one of the biggest laundromats I’ve ever seen, open 24 hours because…it is. The restaurant, a handsome, well-tended room, was almost completely full on a Sunday night. And that population spoke volumes about the wondrous diversity of the SF Valley. For though this was a Thai-Lao restaurant, virtually everyone in the restaurant was Latino.

And they were clearly old hands at the food. Another table recommended the Lao sausage, made with ground pork, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and chili peppers, and tasting nothing like the pork sausages that are SOP at our local barbecue shops.

To that, we added gar gai — chicken with lemongrass, shallots, garlic, chili, lime leaves, eggplant, cabbage, dill, lemon, basil, scallions and sticky rice. Clearly, this is not a simplistic. This is not Thomas Keller’s roast chicken recipe which is flavored only with kosher salt. There are flavors, textures, undertones — enough to keep a palate busy all evening. Or, you can just dig in. Which is how most of us eat. Though the deep-fried seasoned rice balls in the nem kaha tod (crispy fried rice) do give pause simply because they’re so…unexpected. Somewhere in there is sour pork as well, which gets a bit lost in the explosion of flavors.

You can also treat Kop Jai Lai (the name translates as “Thank you very much”!) as just a fine neighborhood Thai eatery, with a menu of such old favorites as chicken satay, sundry curries, pad see ew and rad na rice noodles.

There are old school Chinese options as well — crab Rangoon, chow mein (chicken, pork, beef, shrimp or squid), barbecue pork or pineapple fried rice, orange chicken and Mongolian beef.

Lunch specials come with steamed white rice and egg roll. There’s Coke and Pepsi to drink. The excess tasted fine the next day, but not as good as it did at Kop Jai Lai — partly because it was fresh from the kitchen. And partly because the room was so definitively…us. Our strip mall dining always astounds.

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.

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