At L.A.'s Jitlada, a Thai immigrant's recipe for success
Coral Von Zumwalt / For the Times
Sarintip "Jazz" Singsanong came to Los Angeles in 1979 with $200 and a suitcase. Like many immigrants, she also came with a head full of recipes from her village--in this case, Pak Panang in southern Thailand. Among her 12 siblings, she was known for her cooking: "Everything I make, I make delicious," she says. One of her favorite dishes was khao yam--an elaborate rice salad that's a specialty of the region.
Her transition to L.A. life was not easy. At her first job she made $1.50 an hour. She worked at the Biltmore Hotel on weekdays and at various restaurants on the weekend. When her eldest brother Suthiporn "Tui" Sungkamee came to visit, his 4-year-old daughter Sugar refused to leave L.A. "She was this big," says Sungkamee, pointing to a spot not far above the floor. "She knew what she wanted." Sungkamee ended up moving to L.A., as, eventually, did eight of their siblings.
It was 27 years before Singsanong was able to open her restaurant and serve the dishes of her village the way she wanted to. She (along with other family members) took over Jitlada, a long-established restaurant in Thai Town, in 2006, with Sungkamee working as chef and Singsanong running the front of the house. It wasn't long before the Thai community caught on, and now the restaurant has a cult following among lovers of its searingly spicy, yet wonderfully nuanced, southern Thai cooking.
Khao yam is made a bit differently in almost every village in the south, and Singsanong's version is a standout--a gorgeous confetti of jasmine rice, mango, green beans, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, Thai chiles, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, bean sprouts, coconut and dried shrimp.
Though she often tosses the salad in the restauant kitchen, for diners she thinks might appreciate a show, she brings the ingredients, beautifully arranged as a composed salad, to the table, adds a squeeze of lime, spoons on some sauce, and carefully tosses it in front of them. Her brother makes the sauce, the complexity of which Singsanong says sets it above the rest. Most people, she adds, don't have the patience to get it right. Sungkamee cooks it at least four hours--and sometimes eight--and once for so long that he almost burned down the restaurant.
The sauce is not difficult to make; it just takes practice, Singsanong says, to get the correct balance of salty (the base is budu, fermented anchovy sauce), sour (kaffir lime) and sweet (palm sugar)--as well as the flavor of the herbs (lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves and galangal--Thai ginger).
