Bulan: High Thai

The other night my boyfriend and I were lounging around the house, getting high, trying to decide what to make for dinner when the desire for Thai food struck me to my very soul. Living close to Hollywood, there are probably about sixty-thousand Thai restaurants to chose from. But which one?! Being high and trying to decide on something like this can only be aided by one thing: yelp.com. I always turn to my trusty yelp whenever I want to read some reviews by people who take themselves way too seriously and get all huffy when their drinks aren’t thoroughly chilled or when the waitress that they’re drunkenly hitting on asks them to please leave.

After an hour of wading “this place is SO delicious and afterward my friend and I tag-teamed his girlfriend for the rest of the night and used our leftovers for clothing, SO HOT,” etc., we finally decided on a little place called Bulan. We didn’t really chose it because it had gotten such stellar reviews, but mostly because we were dying from hunger and it’s literally a block from our house.

As we walked up to the joint, my mouth began salivating for those dank ass pad thai noodles. We ordered spring rolls, pad thai with fake chicken (this place is all vegetarian, I forgot to mention), and a tofu fried rice dish. The service was just as prompt as we needed it to be as we were so hungry we could barely have a conversation. After a few weak attempts to eat our spring rolls with chopsticks, my boyfriend sighed a stoner sigh and picked up his fork. Now, I think all the white people out there can really appreciate the kind of restaurant that gives you a place setting with chopsticks and a fork. Bulan is not the kind of place that makes you embarrass yourself by a) attempting to eat with chopsticks when you really don’t know how to and you end up dropping the majority of your food into your lap anyway, or b) making you actually ask the waiter for a fork so that he/she can give you a really snotty look like “what’s wrong with you? You live in LA. Aren’t you supposed to be cultural enough to know how to use a fucking pair of chopsticks?” Now that, my friends, is what I call fine dining.

The pad thai was pretty delicious, although a little on the sweet side for me. The fake chicken was also more than decent, with a strangely chicken-like texture. My boyfriend’s fried rice was pretty standard and nicely done. All in all, I’m totally not going to complain about this place, as our final bill for an appetizer, two entrees, and dessert was under thirty bucks. The other thing that I liked about this place was that although they don’t serve alcohol here, they permit you to bring your own wine or beer with you for a small corking/opening fee. Bringing my own tall can of Tecate with me into a restaurant is something I can definitely get with.

For dessert we ordered sticky coconut rice with mango. I am fucking obsessed with this stuff. It’s all warm and delicious and then you get the mango in there and it’s kind of like what I would imagine it to be like if you got a hand job and a blow job at the same time.

After our meal, I checked out their website, and apparently there’s another Bulan restaurant open in, according to the website, “the heart of L.A.’s famously cool and classy Melrose-LaBrea-Fairfax district south of West Hollywood” as well as the one I went to in “trendy and hip Silver Lake.” The website also teaches you how to say hello in Thai (sawatdee ka), and had awesome photos of a Barbie hanging out around the restaurant.

All in all, if you’re in the Sunset Junction/Silver Lake area, I’d recommend that you check it out. Also, you totally don’t have to be high to go. I think it’d be pretty good sober, too.