Laos in Town

Laos in Town is doing something rare in this city: cooking Lao food as its own cuisine, not a footnote on a Thai menu. The crispy rice salad is nutty, textured, built to be picked apart slowly. The King of Mekong, a whole fried red snapper, stays flaky and genuinely fishy under its batter, which is harder to pull off than it sounds. Crispy chive cakes sit in a puddle of hoisin and outclass most appetizers in the city outright.

The kitchen also treats vegans as a real audience rather than an afterthought, reworking dishes like the crispy rice salad without the pork sauce instead of just pointing them at a side of rice. That's a kitchen confident enough in its flavors to defend them without the usual shortcuts.

Service can be uneven — sometimes you get a server steering you toward the padaek-heavy dishes with real enthusiasm, sometimes you're on your own. It doesn't matter enough to change the verdict.

Five Bib Gourmand nods since 2019 confirm what the food already argues: this is a NoMa spot worth returning to on purpose, not just passing through.