Takeout from Bane Phonkeo

I almost forgot about this...

while on our way home, on a whim, I asked Bert if we could stop by the Laotian place off Imperial Ave...

I wanted to see if they had their flower cookies there...

but as luck would have it, they did not. They only had fried banana chips (kind of pricy at $6 a bag), fried pig ears and some sort of rice snack (which I didn't like last time because it tasted like it was fried in old oil)...

Since we were here, I thought we could order a few things to have for dinner later...

This is what we ordered per our eceipt (to which $6 was added after we ordered a large container of sticky rice):

When I was standing at the counter, I noticed some familiar round fried balls in a big bowl. Was it? Yes it was! Fried rice balls for nam khao! It's not on their menu here.

I asked the guy if they sold it and he said they could sell me some. They recently made a huge batch for some funeral event. He said they hardly ever make it. The lady who makes the papaya salads added that they could mix it all up for us or pack everthing separately so we could do it ourselves at home. She recommended the latter choice, explaining that it would be fresher and nicer to eat immediately after mixing everything.

There was no more chicken larb, so we got beef.


This was kind of...funky. With a bitter taste that I suspect was bile.  There were also bits of tripe in there which were so chewy I couldn't really swallow the pieces. I was not a fan of this.

I liked the chicken mok pla we had last time. This time, we wanted to try the pork mok pla:


While it had a lovely fragrance (coconut milk, lemongrass), the meat pieces weren't what we expected. Yes it was pork, but it was pork offal (liver, some sort of really chewy unidentified pieces that might have been gizzards or something).  Yeah, we didn't like this either.

The lady who made the salad was talkative and cheerful today (she is normally stern).  She asked how spicy we wanted our salad (we chose #1 on their menu list; we should have gone with #6, the Thai style).  She did "warn" us that this salad came with fermented anchovy sauce.

This Mild" papaya salad (Lao style):


Her mild was still quite spicy to us. I was surprised that TC actually liked this (in small amounts). I couldn't get over how strong the sauce sauce and didn't really eat too much of this.  But hey, I gave it a try even after I realized I just ordered a papaya salad with the dreaded strong dark fish sauce.

What I did like (and that we all did) was the Nam Khao. Here it is deconstructed along with bags of chopped green onions, cilantro and whole leaf lettuce. We ordered a container of sticky rice as well.


They even gave us a glove and advised us to mash up the rice balls with squeezed lime juice. Then, crumble the fermented sour sausage link (the deconstructed version only includes one link; you have to pay extra if you want an extra link; we stuck with one). Then, add the chopped green onions and cilantro. Lastly, the peanuts and dried red peppers were added.

Here is Bert doing the mixing...

Looks prettier in this flower shaped bowl...


This was so delicious with the sticky rice. At $7, it costs less that having it at Asia Cafe.  I guess we lucked out the day of our visit.

Previous visit to Bane Phonkeo:
April 2015

Although we didn't leave with the flower cookies, we tried items we've enjoyed before as well as some new ones.  We'll have to try the soup here next time (also not on the menu, but I know they make it because I always see customers with soup bowls on their tables).