I am not a fan of Lukshon. There are some good dishes for sure. But I find much of the food to be boring, heavy handed, and one-note.
The chang mai noodles are just plain awful. I don’t know what dish this is supposed to be a play on. There isn’t a khao soi this bad in all of thai town.
The black rice with a fried egg is–uhhh-warm i guess? It has no flavor. I make better asian inspired rice dishes at home.
We got larb meatballs. Seemed oriented toward a gentrified crowd afraid of spice. It I got a larb with this flavor profile I would be horrified. Larb tod at any thai restaurant is way better.
The best dishes I had were the lobster roll with a pate and the butterfish appetizer. The drinks are expensive and very light on alcohol. All in, this is a very expensive place to eat non-challenging “plays” on dishes that are better in their original form. And I don’t even think it is a question of authenticity vs execution.
Even though I had a nice meal, this is simply true I’m afraid. I have never eaten anything there that made me strongly desire to return, which is why my trips there are infrequent.
Overall, yeah, I’d still probably go to Cassia as well, but I’m not convinced that the two are fair comparisons in a direct sense. I also don’t really find myself returning to Cassia that often either though… even though I constantly crave the laksa and kaya toast… although I pop in their semi-often just for drinks lol I am due for a return actually.
Like I said, Lukshon seems to veer more into that intellectual plane… but at the same time I do feel it is distinctly above average. I think the vision of Yoon is just not that interesting/appealing to most people. I assume the place stays open thanks to the prosperity of FO.
My husband and I bought my in-laws a gift certificate to Cassia for their anniversary. They liked the food well enough, but I’m afraid the noise factor was not to their liking. It was definitely the deal breaker.
Yes, they went on a Saturday night after going to the opera. They couldn’t have picked a noisier time. I thought they could have a relaxing drink at Esters, but apparently that was even more deafening!
I am a little surprised by Esters though, it’s been much quieter whenever I’ve dipped into there. Maybe overflow from Cassia on Saturday night pushed inside of there and caused a rucus though haha
I guess my take on Cassia and Lukson is this. We are surrounded by some of the best southeast Asian food in the world. Thus if you are going to reinterpret dishes that some of us know so well, your renditions better be spectacular because otherwise we are gonna compare the tea leaf salad to the one at Yoma, etc. etc. So perhaps Cassia and Lukshon are not doing quite enough or twisting their dishes far enough, or maybe they just aren’t doing it well enough.
I feel nobody ever goes to Taco Maria and is like damn, I can’t help but compare that abalone and geoduck pozole to a random Boyle Heights spot… Now is that because TM is the only one in town doing an abalone pozole, or is it because the flavors of this pozole are so clean, intense, and thought out that all of a sudden we don’t care for the pozole we had at our friend’s tia’s in Santa Ana?
Though I must say my last visit to Lukshon was spectacular…
Now that I’ve had the “low brow” posole at Potzol den Cano I def have some higher standards…I need to go to TM, even though their current mains don’t interest me really at all (sigh).
But who else makes abelone and geoduck posole in LA?.. Even Fox uses regular clams at Rustic Canyon.
I’m going to go try some posole at Otium tomorrow of all places… maybe they use geoduck there, so will see lol
Seems to me like TM’s tacos would’ve been better.
No one has eaten TM’s fish tacos and been like “wtf, Ricky’s are infinitely better, and like 1/3 the price”, so there’s still something to what you’re saying in that Yoon is not really changing or enhancing or twisting dishes in the most appealing ways.
I mean, it is for sure kind of fascinating to make cabbage the star ingredient of a tea leaf salad, and Yoon actually pulls it off imo, it remains a good salad that is pretty tasty. But is that kind of twist going to appeal to a lot of people? My guess is simply no.
However, does Cassia suffer from this same criticism? No one does laksa even close to as good as Cassia, no twists there, just fucking incredible laksa. Has someone eaten the pot au feu and been like “bleh, I get this better in the SGV every Tuesday at X”? I’ve never heard that…I didn’t even know you could get pot eu feu anywhere else? Maybe I’m missing something there lol
That’s probably why I never thought much of Lukshon. It reminded me of a less focused, less tasty version of Momofuku Ssam.
Even more impressive is that despite the copy cats, the dishes at Momofuku Ssam still manage to stand out (nice unexpected bursts of acid) even though they may appear similar on paper.
Thanks for the heads up about the cold ramen. Looks delicious.
That’s a pretty good lil stretch of road. Surfa’s, FO, Lukshon, Guerrilla Taco’s (sometimes), Bar & Garden. Cool Haus, Pinches… I always miss Bucato when I’m over there. Once I went to Bucato for lunch with my cat in a crate on the way back from the vet. Had a nice meatball sandwich that day.