Cumin, coriander, turmeric, cardamom, dry ginger, and black pepper are all common in mild curry powder blends, but there’s no one recipe.
Yes, please do tell me more about curry powder…
If the generic ingredient is Indian curry powder but he feels something somewhat like star anise or vanilla is missing I’m suggesting it’s probably the use of cardamom pods/seeds. That’s what I’m getting at.
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Interesting article on how ricker fucked up
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nailed it.
There is one thing that I miscalculated pretty drastically. My thought process was that LA people are familiar with Thai food, so we won’t be faced with the same ‘what the fuck is this’ sort of thing, when people look at the menu.
What I really didn’t think through was the fact that because there’s already all this Thai food here, that people might just say ‘Fuck it, we’ve already got great Thai food here, why do we need to go to this place?’ That was a huge miscalculation on my part, and that was … you know, I fucked up. I thought that we’d be a lot busier than we are now, or I hoped we would be. And we’re not.
really solid article though.
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I don’t understand how he made that miscalculation… Did he not consult even a single person in LA?..
i think it might be a mistake to assume the folks here are a typical representation of thai food consumers in l.a.
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Doesn’t seem like it according to the article and the harsh realities Ricker is dealing with…
Maybe he consulted the pollsters.
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all snarkiness aside, i gotta believe he did his homework. at least some.
restaurants are a crapshoot for everyone, arent they?
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solid and sad
Some real estate/food world person/people oversold him on the potential of Chinatown. Actually the potential is there but it is not going to happen in Pok Pok’s life span.
He would have done great if he opened almost anywhere EXCEPT Chinatown, Thai town, or SGV.
I like the food but - and the bar - and would patronize both, if I did not have to drive by (or over) 20-30 places doing equally good food for less money.
He should cut his losses and immediately re-open Pok Pok 2.0 somewhere like Manhattan Bch, Venice/SaMo, Weho, Grove Area, Pasadena. Even fucking Westchester.
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It’s not exactly a miscalculation. This kind of is a weird crap shoot thing.
If you consider how the coffee world came up, Starbucks came out mad hard into cities and looked to see what neighborhoods are current coffee markets, meaning if they saw a coffee shop doing well in an area they opened up right by them and it worked for them. They were able to take away enough business until the others shut down.
You can’t really do that in unique cuisine, where Thai people will continue to support their own and their favorite shops. They never go out of business, white people who go and try Pok and enjoy couple of dishes even love them, eventually decide it’s too pricy for frequent visits etc.
respect the man for copping to it
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I appreciate his frankness and introspection. Nice to see someone talking about and acknowledging their miscalculations rather than blaming everyone else.
I do think he’d not only do well but actually thrive if he went west.
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Yup. Pok Pok Phat Thai would be solid out west - Silicon Beach kids would make this a hit. Cassia has proved that pricing a bowl of laksa in the Westside is not about supply and demand - it’s about exotic, it tastes great and it’s very bourgeois to pay five times the going rate in SE Asia. If Ricker opens in the Westside, his model will work.
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Completely agree. He should get investors and move to the West Side, where there is virtually no competition for his type of food.
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Two and a half years ago, there were all these plans for things to happen in Chinatown. And of course, things take much longer than everyone expects them to take. Chinatown is still a neighborhood where, at 7 o’clock at night, the sidewalk starts to roll up during the weekdays. It just does.
We stopped doing lunches during the weekdays, because it’s the same story. We’d do like 20 covers, and we can’t afford to maintain our staff, we can’t afford to maintain the facility, on 20 covers a day.
Agree mostly. I do think that some of the dishes might be considered too challenging to many west side palates. But it’s also where people will pay through the nose as long as they know the food is using higher quality ingredients.
Pok Pok might also be a failure on the west side, but it could work. And it’s just never going to work anywhere else in LA.
Was there last night at 7PM. Less than half-full and probably 1/3 of the diners looked and sounded Thai - on the young side, and two tables I recall with older gentlemen. By 8PM, 2/3 full and about the same ratio of diners who I suspect were Thai.
Ricker plays Thai music, the outdoor seating is great on a nice night, and the bar has some Thai drinkables. The Christmas lights are very reminiscent of many places in Thailand. Couple that with some well-prepared Thai dishes that are meant for drinks, and I think it is a suitable symbol of nostalgia as much as one could get in LA.
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Agree - if not for Howlin’Ray’s, the chicken here would probably rate as one of the best in C-town. We had it in the khao soi and fried - both were delicious and well-prepared.
No. Hardcore Westsiders draw the line at Lincoln Blvd. Really. You’re considered a pretender or slummin’ it if your crib is east of Lincoln. Night + Market will just make the cutoff. 
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Aaaaand … now Pok Pok is #33 on J. Gold’s 100 Best of 2016. A nice bump from “lukewarm”, I would say.
Guess we’ll finally have to go …