Your Attention Please

It's All Hallows' Eve Eve, and you know what that means here at Something to Doux!

I’ve got a giant, carved out pumpkin’s worth of Halloween jokes, spooOOooOOooky headlines, horrifying food photos, whimsical creature-themed recipes and trick-or-treat candy POWER RANKINGS!

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HahayeahNO. I have absolutely none of those things.

(You’re welcome.)

The Advantages of Being Small

Kaeng Phet Charinda: Northern style home made curry paste in fresh coconut milk, beef, Thai eggplant, sweet basil and a sprig of Thai basil from Dr. Doux's garden.

Hopefully some kick ass Thai food can fill the joyless, un-spooky void.

There exists an imperial crapton (even more than a metric crapton!) of awesome stories I didn’t get to do at The Republic, some because we could never squeeze them in, and some because I left before they were finished. One story that absolutely broke my heart to leave unfinished was the story of Lom Wong.

Lom Wong is a food geek’s dream come true. It’s a casual pop-up run by the sweetest freaking couple you will ever meet, Yotaka (“Sunny”) and Alex Martin — she from Chiang Rai, he from the ‘burbs of Chicago. They are not Thai food aficionados. They are not Thai food experts. They are full-on Thai food evangelists.

I mean, they’re all three of those and more. But the point is that what they do goes beyond cooking mind-blowing food, though, holy shit, do they ever do that. They are cultural ambassadors and champions of the cuisine who are hell-bent on figuring out a way to show the city of Phoenix what Thai food actually looks and tastes like and build bridges between Thai and American culture in the process.

Clockwise from top left: Sai Oua - Northern Thai sausage with sticky rice  |  Nam Prik Ong - spicy tomato and minced pork chile paste, sweet potato, okra, cucumber, pork rinds  |  Rop Nong - gin, lime, tom yum simple syrup, roasted chile tincture, red curry tincture, Thai chile infused rice

This is not an exaggeration. And herein lies my problem.

See, when you’re the dining critic for a major metropolitan region, loudly trumpeting your awestruck adoration for a couple that serves game-changing cuisine to only eight diners just once a month except when they happen to be overseas (which is a lot), that can quickly create, shall we say... a significant imbalance between supply and demand? Suffice it to say that while my commitment to open source dining remains steadfast, there were practical issues with blowing the lid off this one. So instead, I planned to follow them around for a year, periodically sitting down for coffee and an interview, so that whenever they were ready to open a (relatively) more traditional dining establishment that could handle some volume, I could write an awesome piece about how these charming ambassadors of Thai cuisine navigated the Phoenix dining scene to bring their vision to fruition, and oh, by the way, it opens next month.

Then COVID. And then I quit........ *sigh*

The reason I rattle off this (extremely) longwinded story, however, is because there’s some oustanding news here.

Sunny and Alex are back in action. And as of today(!), they’ve launched a weekly order-and-pick-up operation as the next stage of Lom Wong’s evolution. So between their substantial increase in capacity and my drastic drop in readership, I think I can finally uncork this one without making their lives a living hell.

As such, please allow me to tell you a little bit about their food.

To be clear, I don’t know to what extent their new pickup will resemble the kind of stuff they did for their dinner parties. Presumably, they’ll be choosing dishes that travel well. I am utterly confident, however, that they will cut no corners because that is SO not what they do.

Pad Tai Neua: ribeye steak, tamarind sauce, garlic oil, kui chai, bean sprouts, green onion, peanuts, rice noodles. Pictured wrapped... and open.

Example: For today’s launch menu, you can get homemade sai oua — a fabulous northern Thai sausage — along with a bowl of khao soi for which they have rolled their own egg noodles, pounded out their own curry paste and made their own coconut milk.

You heard me.

They are making their own coconut milk. Like, from coconuts. I know that exploitative monkey labor is the hot topic du jour, but guys, there is a middle ground between simian- and self-production that I am so freaking happy they refuse to inhabit. Hell no! Sunny is not offering you canned coconut milk, whether monkey- or human-made. She is making her own damn coconut milk her own damn self, and I am here for it with a heart and a star and googly eyes dripping with rainbow sparkles.

I’m going to rattle off a few dishes I’ve tried, but guys, you need to just trust that whatever they make is going to be spectacular and get it.

I’ve had the sai oua on a couple of occasions and I can’t wait to get it again, so fresh and delicate, but bolstered by that unmistakable chile hum. I adore Sunny’s nam prik ong, a stew of tomatoes and ground pork that's simply served with a plate of crudite. The lam meung — oh man, I don’t know half of what’s going on in this pork stir fry, but I love it, a little oily with sweet fried shallots, wilted phak fai (water spinach) and a wild blast of Northern Thai herbs.

When Sunny works her homemade coconut milk into dishes... holy crap. I snagged a batch of her kaeng phet Charinda, and there are two things you need to know about this curry. The first is that most people in Phoenix have never had a Thai coconut curry that wasn’t made from a factory-processed paste. Don’t shoot the messenger, it’s true. But when somebody has pounded out all of those aromatics by hand, and when all of those flavors bob and weave and mingle together while speaking as a chorus of distinct voices, it’s like the clouds part and the heavens open and you finally get it, maaaaaan.

Clockwise from left: Gai Tawt Won Pen - fried chicken marinated in curry powder, black pepper, cilantro  |  Pla-meuk Neung Manow - steamed squid in chile, lime and garlic broth, cilantro, Chinese celery  |  Lap Meung - minced pork, Northern Thai herbs, phak fai, garlic, crispy shallots

The second thing is that this only works because Sunny’s scratch coconut milk is so light and sweet and delicate that all of those subtle flavors actually come through. And after falling in love with food like this in Chicago and L.A., it absolutely destroyed me to spend nearly a decade in Phoenix before finally finding a small handful of folks who really know what they’re doing. And now you know why I’ve so rarely written about Thai food.

Anyway, there’s more.

I wish I had a photo, but Sunny once did a glorious shrimp noodle stir fry that was all chile and tamarind and lime, bright and vibrant and screaming with life, almost like a bowl of killer tom yum goong transmogrified into noodle form. Gai tawt — the signature fried chicken wings of one of Sunny’s most beloved mentors, Won Pen — arrive in a sizzling crisp, golden, hedonistic pile, and she makes far too many and I am regrettably burdened with having to pick up the slack and bat cleanup. (Oh no. Don’t. Stop. Really, I couldn’t eat another. Are you sure you don’t have more?) And her pla-meuk neung manow, OHMYGOD I love this dish. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, this is an ugly plate to behold, but the .45 caliber FLAVOR in this dish of steamed squid is surpassed only by its texture, so incredibly tender and light, paired with crisp Chinese celery, swimming in a wild and pungent broth, it’s one of the best squid dishes I’ve had, ever, full stop.

I realize I just wrote an entire newsletter’s worth of stuff about one little pop-up, but I hope the point is made. Lom Wong is wonderful. And Sunny and Alex are just the best. And while I’ll miss Alex’s outstanding cocktails, the loving warmth of their living room the and the white bread ice cream sandwiches served at the end of dinner, I’m mostly just thrilled that I’ll be able to sample their food on a weekly basis for a while.

You, uh... might want to check it out.

Thai Ice Cream Sandwich with red curry and Laguvalin 16-year ice creams, coconut sticky rice, toasted peanuts, white bread. What, you thought I was kidding?

My Main Squeeze

Speaking of decade-long quests, I once fell in love with a bottle of grapefruit juice, and after more than a decade apart, we’ve recently been reunited.

I should probably back up a bit.

I adore Japan. I used to travel there a lot, and among the many things I loved doing in Japan was trying every single vending machine beverage I could get my grubby American paws on. Which, if you’ve ever been to Japan, you know is a titanic crapton of beverages.

I did not, but I kept looking. And lo and behold, it recently popped up on Amazon, this time at roughly $3/bottle, and oh hell yes, I can justify that purchase faster than the command can travel from my brain to my index finger to click “Buy Now.” And lo, that which followed was a touching and tearful reunion of man and beverage. But this heartwarming tale is not the reason I write today.

I write because this stuff goes sooooooo well with Campari.

Hierarchy of Craptons

In case you were wondering, in order from least to greatest:

Ton
Crapton
Imperial Ton
Metric Ton
Metric Crapton
Imperial Crapton
Titanic Crapton

Yes, I know that order makes no sense. No, I don’t make the rules. Yes, I’m writing this at 2:00 in the morning, why do you ask?

Bento Bliss

Nori's Sushi + Maki Bento with... well... a lot of stuff.

Not bad, eh?

I mean, it’s still a vehicle for sushi or teriyaki delivery, depending on which variant you get, but there’s some extra interest here that I very much appreciate. A tasty karaage skewer, slivered chilled clam and dressed wakame, a couple hefty slabs of futomaki set beside the more glitzy contemporary rolls. And the nimono! A cup of little stewed bits like shiitake, potato, crisp lotus root and slices of carrot cut into the shape of a cherry blossom, all topped with a pink stalk of tart hajikami. Forget the main event, it’s more of this stuff I’m after, and it’s so hard to find here.

Of course, every time I say something like this, an imaginary scene plays out in my head where Lori Hashimoto comes bursting in like the Kool-Aid Man, yelling, “OMG, Dominic, we’ve done that for years!” and I’m like “I know, Lori, I know, but I can’t write about Hana **ALL** the time!”

Anyway, worth a run. Some of those little morsels are tasty.

Kevin

This week marks a year since we lost the beautiful food nerd second from the left. A lot of you knew him, and those who did know exactly why I feel compelled to remember him today. I’ll save the soliloquies for another time, but I miss you, buddy. Just wanted to say so.

Holding Grudges

One of the fun things about newsletter management tools — particularly when you’re prone to crippling bouts of self-examination — is that you can see exactly how many people unsubsribe, allowing you to absolutely take it personally and never, ever forget who those sons of bitches are.

Kidding! Kidding! (Not kidding.............. j/k.)

This is all the long, creepy way of saying that this newsletter’s circulation is (mostly) growing, and I hope it continues to be enjoyable and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that you continue to read it.