I think Jitlada is still good at the spicy/exotic hard-to-eat end. I ate a Jitlada curry yesterday that was mind-blowingly flavorful. None of the dishes you named have ever been good at Jitlada IMO.
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Glad your experience was better. We had other stuff that was pretty bad as well – the jungle curry And one of the sour dishes is shown below. Everything tasted like they just didn’t give a crap
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What made Jitlada famous were the southern dishes at the end of the menu (originally not translated, some guy on Chowhound did it), so it was never a place to order pad Thai. But if the jungle curry’s not good …
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Thanks!! This place is probably one of my top recommendations when people ask about Thai food. It is very un-hip in a great way, hope it doesn’t change. I do recommend bringing a Thai speaker though, the staff will be confident to bring you real Thai flavors. Show them the photo from this article to get the best pad thai, not the one they served Eater.
EDIT: I was wrong about the photo, the writer reached out to let me know it was in fact the version discussed in the article.
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@ShadrackToussaint gets a shout out today:
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Can’t say I’m surprised. My last trip was also probably ~10 (or maybe closer to 15?) yrs ago. Saw Jazz being SO, SO attentive to one table, while I couldn’t even get anyone’s attention to order a soda. Thought to myself, “I don’t care how much I love the pumpkin curry, I’m coming back here.” Sorry to hear that the food has fallen off.
Intense like sour/funky or intense like everything is super spicy? I’ll kind of be in the area on Friday night (and am totally fine w/ funky but can only tolerate medium spicy).
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Spicy definitely. Prob both.
If memory serves, when I Google translated the Thai menu, there were numerous Som Tum variations, some with pla ra and raw crab.
But there’s a path through the menu that’s spicy but maybe doable: Pad Thai Mesa, wings. I remember the nam khao tod as very spicy though.
My last experience at Jitlada, almost a decade ago too, was this. Had something like 2.5 hours before a movie at the Arclight/Cinerama Dome, and we had to jet before getting some of our food.
After that, Pailin has became my quirky, family run Thai town restaurant, though they’re not really comparable.
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