Thai food in Sherman Oaks exceeds expectations at this restaurant

Like most restaurants that achieve iconic status — usually thanks to the near impossibility of scoring a reservation — it can come as a shock to discover that the fabled Anajak Thai actually serves … food … on plates … with utensils … ordered from a menu … brought to your table by servers from a kitchen.

The reputation of Anajak is so grand, I half expected it to be filled with Siamese demi-gods, clouds and bolts of lightning. Ambrosia on a plate. Food that floats in the air before you. Instead, it’s simply a darned good, impressively creative Thai eatery in a city of many darned good, but not very creative Thai restaurants.

I’ve found that any mention of Anajak is a doorway to the lamentation of landing a reservation. And honestly I don’t know how those folks who eat there during proper evening hours manage to do it. Goodness knows, I’ve tried for years. The best I can manage is late afternoon. And even that is a heroic accomplishment; often, there are no reservations at all. But my daughter, a Zen master of the fine art of Resy, did land a 5:30 p.m. reservation on a Saturday. Miraculous! And off we went.

When Anajak opened in 1981, it was riding the first wave of Thai cooking in the San Fernando Valley. It was a creation of Rick Pichetrungsi, a recent immigrant who had worked at Jack in the Box before going into business for himself. It was, as I recall, a good place to go for mee krob and pad Thai, for chicken satay and green papaya salad. The menu featured Chinese dishes like wonton soup; back in the early 1980s, many Thai restaurants described themselves as Thai-Chinese, so as not to scare away Anglos.

Then, in 2019, Rick had a stroke. And his son Justin left his job as an art director at Walt Disney Imagineering to take over the business. His re-imagineering of the menu began almost immediately, quickly taking Thai classics and giving them a Modern California Cuisine twist. There isn’t another Thai restaurant in town (in America? in the world?) with a menu like the one at Anajak.

And there’s an added quirk to the Anajak experience, when you consider that this is a small, crowded, cluttered room, with bottles of wine stored everywhere, and a flock of tables squeezed into an alley on the side. Tacos are served on a first-come/first-served basis in the alley on Tuesdays, a notion begun in 2020 as restaurants descended into the murk of Covid. On a warm evening, the line seems to stretch into infinity.

The wine list consists of three pages of magnifying glass worthy type. It runs to close to 500 wines, more than a few with prices that surpass $500 a bottle. I like beer with my Thai food … but then I’m a peasant. And anyway, I don’t want to mess up the wonderful flavor of the sweet, tenderly chewy pork ribs in a subtle pineapple glaze by choosing an inappropriate Bordeaux. Having finally gotten into Anajak, it was the food I wanted. And, it was the food I got — more than enough for me to appreciate I was in the presence of a culinary legend.

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The menu at Anajak has a date at the top, changing a bit from day to day, though there are dishes which seem to be evergreens. Serious culinary pleasures like the kratong tong — delicate pastry cups filled with chunks of yellowfin tuna, corn and peas. They were small enough to be an amuse bouche, but not nearly that … precious. Regulars can count on the continued presence of  kampachi crudo, snappy papaya salad (made with kumquats!), radish & cucumber salad, northeastern pork meatballs — and always the southern Thai fried chicken.

If there’s a singular dish that’s on nearly every table — a defining creation of Anajak — it’s the fried chicken. It doesn’t have the obsessive crunch of the fried chicken dishes emerging from Korea and Japan; this is not a chicken-shaped potato chip. But it does have a proper crisp, overlaying a moist juicy interior that tastes like the very essence of well-cooked chicken. It’s a big portion, enough for two.

It comes with a supplement of Astrea kaluga hybrid caviar for $120 extra. I don’t understand caviar with my fried chicken. Lots of bones to chew on are more than enough. Caviar gilds a nice crunchy lily.

And though the menu at Anajak is dotted with their own creations — barbecue pork collar with coriander-soy molasses, Whale Cove mussels from Baja in tom kha broth, Maryland soft-shell crabs — this notably short menu finds room for son Justin’s versions of the Thai dishes Rick Pichetrungsi was serving 45 years ago. Like Dungeness crab fried rice, pad see ew, pad Thai, drunken noodles and Panang curry with Chinese eggplant.

Does Anajak deserve its reputation? Very much so! Is it worth playing reservation roulette? Totally! Is this the best Thai restaurant in SoCal? Let’s say it’s the most creative.

I’ve eaten very well in Thai Town. But I haven’t eaten Carabinero prawns in shrimp oil and garlic confit. Or grilled black sea bream. And that fried chicken is worth the labor needed to get in. It tastes just as good in the late afternoon as in the evening. Maybe someday Anajak will do lunch. And the angels will sing.

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.

Anajak Thai

• Rating: 3 stars
• Address: 14704 Ventura Blvd.., Sherman Oaks
• Information: 818-501-4201; www.anajakthai.com
• Cuisine: Thai
• When: Dinner only, Tuesday through Sunday.
• Details: Beer and wine; reservations beyond essential
• Prices: About $50 per person
• On the menu: 11 Small Courses ($12-$42), 10 Entrées ($23-$49), 11 Side Dishes ($4-$28)
• Credit cards: MC, V
• What the stars mean: 4 (World class! Worth a trip from anywhere!), 3 (Most excellent, even exceptional. Worth a trip from anywhere in Southern California.), 2 (A good place to go for a meal. Worth a trip from anywhere in the neighborhood.) 1 (If you’re hungry, and it’s nearby, but don’t get stuck in traffic going.) 0 (Honestly, not worth writing about.)