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Pok Pok
Pok Pok opened in 2005 in Portland, Oregon, founded by chef Andy Ricker, who built the restaurant directly around dishes and techniques he'd learned during years of extended personal travel and research throughout Thailand rather than an Americanized interpretation of the cuisine. The restaurant's Vietnamese-influenced Ike's Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings became one of its most specifically celebrated dishes, a chicken wing preparation that drew significant national food media attention and helped establish Ricker's broader reputation as one of the most serious American chefs working in Southeast Asian cuisine specifically. Ricker expanded Pok Pok into a small restaurant group with locations in Portland and New York, alongside a cookbook and a canned drinking-vinegar product line, before ultimately closing most of the group's locations in the 2020s, including the original Division Street restaurant, as Ricker shifted focus to new projects. Pok Pok's combination of Andy Ricker's deeply researched, direct-from-Thailand culinary approach and its outsized influence on how a generation of American chefs and diners came to think about serious regional Thai cooking has made it one of the most historically significant Thai restaurants in the country's recent culinary history.
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Jitlada
Jitlada has operated in a Thai Town strip mall on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles since 1993, and it became widely known specifically for its Southern Thai cooking under chef Suthiporn "Tui" Sungkamee, whose intensely spicy, regionally specific menu set it apart from the milder, more generalized Thai food found at most American restaurants. The restaurant built a devoted following among serious Los Angeles food writers and chefs specifically for dishes rarely found on other American Thai menus, including a extensive selection of Southern Thai curries and dishes built around ingredients like sator beans that most other restaurants don't stock or prepare. Jitlada's menu grew to include a specific "if you dare" section for its spiciest dishes, a direct challenge to diners that became part of the restaurant's broader identity and reputation among Los Angeles food enthusiasts specifically seeking out the most intense, authentic versions of Southern Thai cuisine available in the city. Jitlada's combination of its specifically Southern Thai regional focus and its willingness to serve genuinely intense, uncompromising spice levels has made it one of the most respected and specifically challenging Thai restaurants anywhere in the country among serious regional-cuisine enthusiasts.
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