Ruen Pair — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Ruen Pair is located in New Hollywood Plaza in the heart of Thai Town and shares its valet parking with several businesses including other Thai restaurants.

It bills itself as serving "authentic" Thai food and based on the clientele dining there (mostly Thai), it would appear this is true. They don't dumb down the cuisine so the taste of fish sauce and chilis stand out (you can designate the level of spice from mild, medium, hot, etc.).

Items ordered:

Fried shrimp cakes; chicken coconut soup; shrimp pad Thai; pineapple fried rice; spicy fried catfish; sautéed morning glory; steamed Jasmine rice; Thai iced tea.

The fried shrimp cakes were plump and meaty with a crispy exterior. The chicken coconut soup was fragrant with various herbs and came with an abundance of straw mushrooms in addition to white chicken meat -- we opted to have the hot pot serving dish set aflame for a dramatic presentation. The shrimp pad Thai was prepared well with decent quality shrimp; I really enjoyed the sautéed morning glory and would get that again.

The food came out quickly and in no particular order with the pad Thai and pineapple fried rice arriving first. Unfortunately, the Pineapple fried rice was mushy and didn't have much pineapple and cashews. I would skip this. However, others have raved about it. As for the spicy fried catfish, it came with a very rich flavorful sauce and was topped with fried Thai mint; the catfish was deep fried to the point of making the bones mostly crunchy and edible -- the meat of the fish was cooked to the consistency of jerky and I'd say it's an acquired taste. Next time I'd want to try it steamed or go for the seasonal pompano fish.

With over 110 items on the menu, there's lots more to explore and in future visits I'll probably try the pad kee mao (noodles sautéed in chili sauce); fried pompano; papaya salad with crab; pork jerky; Tom Yum soup; shrimp paste fried rice.

The cuisine overall is very savory and would go well with beer (which they sell...

Trip to LA had me and my companion finding this place first night. We ordered the Pad Kee Mao for takeout around 9pm in Wednesday. Calling the order in advance and picking it up went smoothly and eliminated any need to wait at the restaurant. This dish was excellent. Flavours are well balanced, noodles are a generous girth, chicken was not too dry. This dish was a near perfect for me I would say.

After this experience I decided to return and try something else. I definitely should have tried a curry, but I went for a Cha Po, which is bbq pork, roasted duck and deep fried pork belly on rice, with a special sauce. A very simple dish with decent flavours but I felt it was priced high for its simplicity. Perhaps my imagination took the menus description of the dish to heights beyond its reach.

Third visit, again with my companion, whose regular go-to Thai order is the Pad Thai. This visit she ordered the latter with chicken and I repeated my initial glory with the Pad Kee Mao order. Again my dish was excellent, I won’t reiterate it in detail in this paragraph. The Pad Thai, I think because of the excellence of the Pad Kee Mao, suffered from the direct comparison and paled harshly. It wasn’t inedible but was on the sweeter end of the Pad Thai spectrum. Some of the green onions were also left quite large and not sliced into easier to balance bite sizes.

Possibly obscure reference point is Sukho Thai up in Toronto. Their Pad Thai is more a subtle undercurrent of balanced sweetness and the inclusion of some spice (heat) is nice too, but understandably a preference. Also their Pad Kee Mao is notable. Another favourite Thai experience was in Portland on the east...

Never see any services at any Thai restaurant like this place, they all like robots & seriously service is not good or friendly AT ALL. Especially was a guy that tried to ignored ,it seems like he doesn't want you to ask for anything. This place had lots of servers but when leftover food, they just dropped the boxes and you do it yourself. Lots of Thai restaurant have only 3 servers for example Jitlada , Vim, Palms Thai and more , they packed food for you and I mean all servers here just stood there & wasn't busy at all. Now let's talk about food, I was told to come here because food is good. First time 2 weeks ago, we order 2 bowls of noodles, 1 was sweet Kuai Jub and the other one was Yen Ta Fo , this one was tasteless. Then almost the end next table ordered Spicy Crispy Catfish which looked so good so we ordered to go, wow this dish must forgot to put fish sauce or spicy or sweet , it was tasteless. So last Friday evening we just gave them another try we ordered crispy pork with Thai Broccoli and spicy catfish again which I told the lady that a week before we ordered this dish to go but there was no taste at all , This time came was very very salty! WTH! then came last dish was Pa lo duck was really terrible which should be really brown sauce but their sauce was almost like water & bad part was lots of bones. So we desired that this time would be our last time. There are a lots of Thai restaurant in Hollywood especially I'm Thai so I know which one is good or no good. When we left no one say thank you or goodbye. If you want bad...