Critic Bill Addison explains why Justin Pichetrungsi's Anajak Thai became one of the most-opening meals to have in Los Angeles.
How chef Genet Agonafer helped make Ethiopian cuisine one of the central pieces in the mosaic of Los Angeles culinary culture
The triumph of #TTT also made Pichetrungsi’s story one of the most repeated restaurant narratives in recent Los Angeles history. His father, Ricky, born in Thailand to a family of Cantonese heritage, immigrated to the United States in the late 1960s. He worked at various restaurants, including a sushi bar, until he saved enough to open his own place; Pichetrungsi’s mother, Rattikorn, ran the dining room.
When his father had a stroke in 2019, Pichetrungsi made the life-changing decision to leave a successful career as an art director in Disney’s Imagineering department and take over running the restaurant full-time. He’d never really left the business into which he was born — he’d started tinkering with the wine program, leaning heavily into natural wines, before his father’s health declined — but to thrive, he had to build onto Anajak’s decades-old bedrock with his own creative expansions.
Omakase reservations are currently sold out until September. I was lucky enough to score seats last summer. In a progression that included shima-aji nigiri fashioned from sweet rice and fish sauce; scallops in cold coconut soup; dry-aged steelhead trout in nutty, nose-tingling panang sauce; and one glorious stalk of baby corn grilled with chile jam, it was among the most mind-opening meals I’ve had in Los Angeles.
All the while, the restaurant’s primary menu is tighter, truer, stronger. Fried chicken wings have a tauter sour-sweet edge in the tamarind glaze; Massaman brisket curry — lush and aromatic — comforts profoundly. Rattikorn is on hand to make her dessert specialty, slices of ripe mango over sweet rice simmered in coconut milk.
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