ABC News’s segment: The Hungry Hound, found a Laotian restaurant in the north side of Chicago.
Southeastern Asian flavors on Far North Side
By Steve Dolinsky
Only one restaurant in town focuses on the food from Laos, and ABC7’s Hungry Hound has tried everything on the menu.
If you like Thai food, chances are you’re going to really like the food from Laos. There are plenty of similarities– mainly coconut milk, fish sauce, young ginger and lemongrass, but there are also a few differences. As I found out on a recent trip through a tiny Laotian menu, they make the trip to uptown worthwhile.
It’s easy to find Southeast Asian dishes from Vietnam and Thailand while roaming around Uptown, but you’ve got to look a little harder to find the city’s only Laotian option, Sabai-dee, which simply means “hello.”
“Our food is less sweet and it has more spice, salty; to me it’s more flavorful,” said Kevin Wong, Sabai-Dee.
Since Wong is Chinese, he offers a small assortment of native items from a long, heated display case, but it’s the Laotian dishes that are worth the trip. A Nam salad begins with rice, flavored with shallots, lemongrass and a beaten egg; the rice is formed into balls, which are then deep-fried. Those crispy-crunchy rice balls are then broken up, along with fresh herbs and vegetables, plus chopped nuts, to form the eventual salad. Green papaya salads are commonly found in Northeastern Thailand, but in Laos, it’s a little different.