Anajak Thai Cuisine

Book Early or Miss Out: Anajak Thai Is One of LA's Hardest Reservations

Seats at Anajak Thai move fast. The omakase format books out days in advance, Thai Taco Tuesday has developed a following that makes it harder to secure than most fine-dining tables in Los Angeles, and the à la carte dining room fills by early evening most nights. If you are visiting for the first time, plan at least two to three weeks out — and treat this like booking a tasting menu destination, not a neighborhood Thai spot, even though it occupies both categories simultaneously.

What Anajak Thai Is Now

For four decades, Anajak Thai served Sherman Oaks as a reliable community Thai restaurant on Ventura Blvd — the kind of place you return to out of habit rather than occasion. That changed decisively in 2019 when James Beard Award-winning chef Justin Pichetrungsi took the kitchen in a new direction, layering California-ingredient sensibility and omakase structure onto an already deep Thai foundation. The result is a 44-year-old neighborhood bistro that now ranks #49 on the 2025 Opinionated About Dining Casual North America list (it ranked #52 in 2024), holds a Michelin Plate, earned LA Times Restaurant of the Year in 2022, and placed #2 on the LA Times 101 Best Restaurants list in 2023. The transformation is recent enough to matter: the accolades reflect what the restaurant is now, not what it was for most of its history.

For a first-timer, the most important thing to understand is that Anajak Thai operates on multiple registers. You can arrive for the à la carte menu and eat Thai food that is technically precise and ingredient-driven in a way that most Thai restaurants in Los Angeles are not. Or you can book the omakase experience and let the kitchen lead. Thai Taco Tuesday is its own event entirely, a weekly format built around a rotating taco that has generated its own reputation. The dry-aged striped bass fish taco, for instance, represents exactly the kind of cross-cultural technical move that defines what makes this kitchen interesting: classical Thai flavour logic applied to ingredients and formats borrowed from elsewhere in California's food culture.

The Kitchen's Technical Edge

What separates Anajak Thai from the broader field of Thai cooking in Los Angeles is precision at the technique level, not just quality of ingredients. Chefs like those at Ayara Thai Cuisine and Luv2eat Thai Bistro execute regional Thai cooking with genuine seriousness, but Pichetrungsi is working in a different register: one where dry-aging proteins, omakase sequencing, and a wine program with genuine depth sit alongside traditional Thai preparations. Night + Market applies a similarly California-inflected lens to Thai cooking but with a louder, more casual format. Pa Ord Noodle and Mae Malai Thai House of Noodles sit in an entirely different category, noodle-focused, low-price, high-frequency. Anajak Thai sits at the apex of the Los Angeles Thai category in terms of ambition and execution, and the awards record supports that position. If you want a benchmark for what Thai cooking can achieve at the highest level outside Bangkok, reference Nahm or Samrub Samrub Thai in Bangkok, Anajak Thai holds its own in that conversation.

What to Expect on a First Visit

The room is a neighborhood bistro, not a design-forward fine-dining space. Arrive expecting a warm, low-key environment rather than the kind of architectural statement you get at restaurants like Vespertine. The wine list is a genuine differentiator, this is not a standard Thai restaurant wine program, and it rewards engagement. The price range sits at $$$, which puts it well below the $$$$ tier occupied by most of Los Angeles's tasting-menu destinations. For first-timers, that pricing is one of the strongest arguments for booking: you are getting omakase-level technique and a nationally ranked kitchen at a price point that undercuts most comparable experiences in the city.

Service hours are tight, the kitchen closes at 9 pm most nights, and Monday is dark. Wednesday opens later (4 pm) and the restaurant does not take late reservations, so plan your evening accordingly. If you are coming from outside the San Fernando Valley, build in travel time: Ventura Blvd in Sherman Oaks is accessible but not a five-minute detour.

Know Before You Go

The Verdict

Anajak Thai is worth the effort to book, and at $$$ it is one of the stronger value arguments in the Los Angeles fine-dining conversation. You are getting a James Beard Award-winning kitchen, a nationally ranked omakase format, and a wine program that takes the meal seriously, at a price that sits a full tier below comparable destinations. The difficulty is real: this is not a restaurant you walk into. But if you plan ahead, it delivers a technically serious meal that very few Thai restaurants in the United States can match. For a broader picture of where it sits within Los Angeles dining, see our full Los Angeles restaurants guide. For planning the rest of your trip, our Los Angeles hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide cover the rest.