Baimon Restaurant

I went to a dinner with a bunch of food writers a few months ago, where I bravely posited that cheap ethnic eats in L.A. were deeper, more varied, and better than in New York. Obviously, this is a position that is often met with indignance bordering on furor. I really only said it because there was a little too much peacock talk about New York food's superiority. New York has great cheap ethnic eats, but to say it's the BEST place in the country for cheap ethnic eats isn't quite right. I'm as proud as any New Yorker, but one can't deny that L.A. has a high number of ass-kicking, undiluted, deep ethnic restaurants. Rent is cheaper, communities are more homogenous.

Case in point: my mom took my uncle, aunt and me to Baimon Restaurant in Rowland Heights, a mere 5 minute drive from our house. It's not in a notable neighborhood; it's not the kind of restaurant that will ever get a Saveur profile. The dish to order is the rad nah. Wide, soft rice noodle ribbons or fine rice vermicelli are pan fried with dark, sweet soy sauce. The noodles are topped with a small pond of thin, cornstarch slurry-thickened gravy with earthy whole bean sauce, emerald green, bittersweet Chinese broccoli sliced on the bias, and your choice of meat.

Rad nah is not a flashy dish. It seems simple enough. There are probably less than 10 ingredients in the whole dish -- not very many for a Thai dish. There are no spicy, colorful fireworks like there are in a good papaya salad. The level of difficulty in composition isn't as obvious as it is in hor mok, an elegantly banana leaf-wrapped, steamed fish curry.

Good examples can be found, but great examples are few and far between. I still remember the rad nah we used to get from the pak soi, which means "mouth of the road", where we turned in to go to my uncle's house in Thailand. The sauce was the perfect viscosity and salinity, the noodles soft and gently, sweetly charred in places, the Chinese broccoli crisp and bright.

Baimon's rad nah matches the excellence of the one from my romantic memories of the stand at the pak soi, which no longer exists. Yeah, it's that good. As my uncle said, digging in with concentration and gusto, it's "one of the best." He liked it so much, he ate it three times in the week that he spent in La Puente. We covered the table with four gravy filled platters of rad nah and pretty much cleaned our plates, which is really saying something considering my aunt, uncle and mom's dwindling appetites. Can't vouch for anything else on the menu, but I probably won't ever order anything but the rad nah anyway.

Baimon Restaurant
1741 Fullerton Rd.
Rowland Heights, CA
(626) 964-6851