When Kaew Saengsom was a little girl in her home province of Nakhon Phanom in far-northeastern Thailand, she paid her way through grammar school by working at a papaya salad stand. She got really good at whacking away at the hard unripe fruit with a large knife, and that’s part of the reason why the som tam she serves at her tiny Burbank strip-mall storefront, Spicy Thai Lao, is so exceptional. While most restaurant preparations of this iconic spicy-sweet-sour salad are served as nearly uniform noodlelike shreds of grated papaya, Saengsom’s is made from unevenly hacked batons of crisp green fruit. It makes for a superior texture, and I haven’t seen it prepared this way anywhere in the area besides Next Restaurant during its Tour of Thailand menu.
When Saengsom was growing up, both of her parents worked outside the home, so they taught her to cook for the family. She later helped out in an aunt’s restaurant, but when she moved to Bangkok at 18 to work as a dental assistant, she only cooked intermittently. And when she married an American and moved here, she held an office job for ten years before going back to work in a Thai restaurant, where the owner told her to tone down her seasoning. A year and a half ago she opened her own place, where she could cook however she pleased.
Aroma plays almost an equal role to flavor in her cooking. There’s a spicy squid dish with green beans, green peppercorns, green bell peppers, and small green Thai eggplants that almost tastes grassy. To this she adds krachai root, or lesser galangal, a gingery rhizome that she says complements the spiciness and mitigates strong-smelling fishy flavors.
5357 State Rd.Burbank 708-424-1758spicythailao.com
