Thaia
“Top Chef’s” Marcel Vigneron (Wolf, Beefsteak) has opened a Thai restaurant in Malibu’s Point Dume Plaza. Thaia offers curries, pan-fried noodles, soups, satay and California-influenced Thai fare as well as Pan-Asian plates such as BBQ ribs with five spice and lemongrass, and spicy tuna crispy rice with nuoc cham. It’s the latest concept from the team behind Ollo and Bui Sushi (also in Malibu and helmed by Vigneron) and is open for dinner Tuesday to Sunday with cocktails, beer, wine, dine-in and takeout available.
29169 Heathercliff Road, Suite 102, Malibu, (310) 589-2200, thaiamalibu.com
Dishes at Thaia include curries, pan-fried noodles, soups, satay and California-influenced Thai fare.
It’s been a hard year for all restaurants, everywhere, though Los Angeles’s Filipino food scene has taken two particularly brutal blows as a result of the ongoing pandemic. First was the loss of Ma’am Sir, the nationally-acclaimed Pinoy spot on Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake, which ended its multi-year run back in August 2020. Now LA is mourning the end of another staple in the genre: Lasa, the star almost four-year-old dinner spot at Chinatown’s Far East Plaza. The restaurant, known for its elevated fare served in a moody, mellow evening atmosphere, had for years been among the city’s best places not just for Filipino food, but for a meal period. Now the shop has turned into Lasita, a massively more casual takeout home for rotisserie chicken and natural wine.
Kuya Lord’s Filipino feast is food of power, finesse and delight
Pancit chami with prawns from the Kuya Lord pop-up in La Cañada Flintridge.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Feb. 3, 2021 6 AM PT
Like most of the dishes Lord Maynard Llera prepares for Kuya Lord, the pop-up he operates out of his home in La Cañada Flintridge, he packs his version of kare-kare into an aluminum tray lined with banana leaf. The stew, a staple of Filipino cuisine, in this case more resembles a sauce; it clings to a row of smoked Wagyu oxtails, the whole presentation shaped loosely into an oval.