i’m flagging this blatantly beardist post that denigrates the great facial hair of gordon liu, wilt
chamberlain, evil mr. spock, need i go on?
It’s possible. I don’t think it’s as overrated as people imagine. Pok Pok also makes somewhat more sense in Portland than LA. It was just never meant for export.
Oooh, micro-aggression, you hurt my feelings… 
Kidding.
But re: Portland - love the place, will probably move there when retired, but non-whites can come too !
well, at least they’re doing better than Clifton’s.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/pok-pok-la-los-angeles-2
(130 pics)
What a fun time! Did you love Nong’s? The pod is closed on weekends and we went to the brick and mortar. The chicken was deemed better than the pork.
I thought the chicken was better than good. If I lived up there, I’d definitely eat it pretty regularly. I preferred the original sauce to the peanut sauce. I would have liked more cilantro and cucumbers. I ate at the brick and mortar as well.
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Agree, Luv2Eat as well.
j.gold just dropped his review and 2 of his recommended dishes are vietnamese/vietnamese inspired. LOL
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What’s odd about that? Pok Pok has always said those wings came from an early employee who got them from a Vietnamese recipe.
there’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but kind of speaks volumes about the actual thai food being served there.
it’s the wings and the cha ca dish (at least according to the goldster)
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I hear you but they’re pretty straight forward about this. It says on the menu where the dishes came from even, I think. I don’t think there’s any fraud going on.
The menu on the wings says: “Based on our long time friend and Portland employee Ike Truong’s recipe from his home in vietnam.” On the Cha Ca La Vong (a very good dish btw), it says “Our stab at the famous dish from La Vong Restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam.”
I’m not implying anything about fraud or cultural theft or whatever. I just would expect a Thai place to be known for their Thai dishes.
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the other being cocktails?
THAT’S the take-away? Pok Pok is a good cocktail bar. Chinatown def needed another cocktail bar so… yay?
Cuttlefish and beer does sound good…all the time.
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My favorite part of the review is the concluding paragraph where he just straight up starts listing massive misfires with the Thai cooking before naming the two Viet dishes as the best dishes lol
I actually agree with him in a strange way though, the La Vong and the Wings are probably the best two dishes there, and the La Vong is a pretty decent dish. In my original review it was the one dish I noted:
I went the other night and was pretty spectacularly disappointed. The cocktails were as good as everyone has described and I thought the wings were also very good, but just about everything else was not good.
Nothing was spicy (not that that’s a requirement, but we ordered ‘the spiciest thing on the menu’ and had to ask for chilis on the side), everything from catfish to pork belly curry to boar collar was average at best, and we spent a pretty stupid amount of money. Like we could have comfortably gone to n+m three times for the same price, and had much better and more interesting meals each time.
If it had been 1/3 the price or the portions considerably larger it would have been fine, but as it is now I can’t see myself going back, except maybe for a cocktail and some wings once in a while. Maybe he should open a sports bar (Pok Pok Muay Thai?), that would be something I could get behind.
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Same experience I had pretty much. Zero heat in anything…
It does seem like he should just open a cocktail bar with wings lol
Night + Market isn’t even Pok Pok’s competition imo, it’s places like Isaan Station, which blow it out of the fucking water at like 1/3rd or less of the price. But those places do lack awesome cocktails I guess…
One thing that is special about Pok Pok is that it’s dog friendly and has a nice outdoor patio.
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So is hoy ka. No alcohol at hoy ka though 
Playing devil’s advocate since I haven’t been but I have a buddy that’s convinced the misunderstanding is that Pok Pok is mostly northern thai the way Jitlada is mostly southern thai so really can’t be compared to most of the restaurants around town.
Looking at the menu the glass noodles with pork sausage and ground pork, grilled boar collar, and some of the northern dishes look like they could be good.
Kinda like the Jitlada of northern Thai maybe? @TonyC