Organization
Little Lalune Cuisine
Little Lalune Cuisine, also written Little La Lune, is a Cambodian-Thai restaurant. It is at the east corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Cherry Avenue in Long Beach, California.[1][2] Han Pok and Chhaylee Saing opened it in late 2011 as a smaller successor to the family's La Lune, a Cambodia Town restaurant lost to fire that year.[3][4]
History
For years La Lune was one of the banquet restaurants of Long Beach's Cambodia Town, where people celebrated birthdays and anniversaries and launched mayoral campaigns. In April 2011 a fire destroyed it. Its loss left a gap in the Khmer community, and the Saing family moved quickly to fill it with Little La Lune, a small spinoff in a quiet strip mall.[4] The restaurant opened in late 2011 in P.C. Plaza.[3] The family also runs La Lune Imperial nearby.[3] By late 2012 La Lune Palace, a restaurant and event space under the La Lune name, had opened on the third floor of an office building beside the Long Beach airport, at 2801 E. Spring Street. Its main room hosted fundraiser galas and wedding receptions.[5]
The new dining room broke with the old banquet halls. Pendant lamps light wine-red walls above white booths with backlighting, and the room also has bamboo lanterns, elephant statues and metal flowers on the walls.[4][3] The menu dropped banquet dishes such as lobster tails and platters of dessert for a shorter list of everyday Cambodian and Southeast Asian food.[4]
Food
The cooking draws on Cambodian, Thai and Chinese influences.[3] Mornings bring rice porridge, a true soup of broth, swollen rice grains, fried garlic and cilantro, with pork, chicken or catfish. It is eaten with cha wai, or fry bread, a freshly fried cruller.[4][1] Phnom Penh noodle soup comes with fish balls, shrimp, squid, dried baby shrimp, rice noodles, cilantro and fried garlic, and a bone soup holds marrow-filled shanks in a pork and beef broth.[4][3]
Sdao, the bitter young shoots of the neem tree, is served as a salad with bean sprouts, cucumber, scallions, roasted pork and fish, dressed with a slightly sweet fish sauce.[4][3] Beef sticks are marinated with lemongrass and lemon leaves and served with a Khmer papaya salad sharp with ginger. Pork chitterlings are deep-fried and come with a sweet and tangy dipping sauce.[3] Other dishes include beef lok lak with a peppery lemon sauce; cha kroeng, chicken, beef or frog legs rubbed with a paste of lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf; a sweet soy pork chop; a Thai-style crispy noodle salad; and a Khmer-style kimchi of chayote, ginger, cucumber and carrot. A taro shake is made with vanilla and coconut.[4][3]
Visiting
The restaurant offers dine-in, takeout and catering, has a private parking lot in front and at the side, and is wheelchair accessible.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Little Lalune Cuisine, official website
- ↑ Little La Lune Cambodian-Thai Cuisine, home page
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 Food GPS, Little La Lune: Cambodian cuisine with flair in Long Beach (May 2013)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Los Angeles Times, The Find: Little La Lune continues Cambodian tradition (September 2011)
- ↑ Sarah Bennett, "Long Beach Lunch: La Lune Palace", OC Weekly (December 19, 2012)