You Can Eat Like ‘White Lotus’ Star Lisa at Los Angeles’s Fiery Mesa Thai

A spread at Mesa Thai. Mesa Thai’s Northeastern and Central Thai street food is serious enough to lure in one of the world’s biggest pop stars For White Lotus actress, Blackpink member, and Coachella headliner Lisa (also known as Lalisa), a recent pre-festival stay in Los Angeles meant also heading to the city’s famed Thai Town. The section of Hollywood known as “Thailand’s 77th province” by the Thai Chamber of Commerce beckoned with the spicy, sour, and tangy flavors she grew up with in Thailand’s northeast Buriram Province.

Her choice, chef Phitwasuphon “Ple” Thanaporn’s restaurant Mesa Thai, is known for its fiery Isan cuisine. Lisa arrived unannounced at Mesa Thai on March 22 at around 8 p.m.



, Thanaporn says, a half hour before the restaurant closed, flanked by her manager and bodyguard. “One of my servers slipped me a note that it was Lisa, and I began to cry,” she says. “Then I pulled myself together and said I’m going to make her some dishes she’ll never forget.

” Seated at table number six, wearing a hoodie to conceal her identity, Lisa ordered larb salad, pad thai Mesa, tom sap (a northeastern pork rib soup known for its intense sour and spicy flavors), and yum ma muang, a piquant green mango salad. Thanaporn opened Mesa Thai in 2018 to serve the customer base she had built up while selling food out of her home in Los Angeles. Her mother, Bungon Inyu, had a popular street food stand in Bangkok, where Thanaporn learned to cook dishes like boat noodles and papaya salad.

After arriving in Los Angeles in 2010, Thanaporn worked as a licensed massage therapist and as a cottage food producer of northeastern Thai street food until she opened Mesa Thai, just two years after K-pop girl group Blackpink debuted on the world stage. In 2022, Thai Town Council president Ton Pattana shared on a video series called Thai Town Check In that Thanaporn “represented the new generation of Thai cooks” and made “really good boat noodles” that reminded him of how they are served in Bangkok. The restaurant slings pork boat noodle soup every day, as well as beef boat noodles on Tuesdays and weekends.

Thanaporn scrawls its menu in colorful Thai script onto a large chalkboard hanging on the back wall. Laotian street food staple yam naem khao tod, a dish of broken deep-fried rice balls with fried pork rinds and pork meat, is a highlight among the menu’s spicy and sour Isan salads. Traditional pad thai at Mesa Thai.

Green mango salad with crab. Boat noodles at Mesa Thai. Crispy tofu bites.

Thanaporn’s chalkboard Isan menu, untranslated, teases non-Thai speakers with cutesy icons such as chili peppers, shrimp, mortar and pestle, a tom yum pot, and skewers (the Isan menu is written in English script on Mesa Thai’s website). The left column on the menu features various kinds of som tum (papaya salad) with seven versions, plus ones made with green mango. There’s som tum pa mah with fermented blue crab, som tum korat made with pickled fish, and Lao-style som tum luang prabang that delivers a spicy umami bomb from seafood paste, fish sauce, and padaek (an unfiltered fish sauce from Laos).

“Very spicy” here means 35 to 40 Thai chiles, but Thanaporn says Lisa opted for a medium-spicy mango salad without any proteins or sides. “In Thailand, we eat papaya salad with sticky rice and chicken wings, or sai krok Isan (pork sausage), foods to cool you off,” New, a server at Mesa Thai, told me on a recent visit. Thanaporn approached my table to let me know I was sitting at the same table as Lisa.

“She only took a few bites of the larb, so maybe she didn’t like it, but she ate a lot of the tom sap,” she said. The team at Mesa Thai. It takes some bravado for non-Thai customers to order off the Isan menu.

Servers at Mesa Thai tend to steer non-Thai diners toward familiar, sweeter versions of dishes like pad thai, more cautious about recommending the extremes in acidity, spiciness, and salt found in Isan dishes. For those willing to brave the flames, something “Thai spicy” requires napkins at the ready to wipe away tears. An imposing combination of blackened chiles and chile flakes float on the surface of the tom sap, which is served in a tom yum soup pot; the soup contains quartered tomatoes, sliced lemongrass, and chopped scallions encircling an orange Sterno flame.

“It’s very spicy and sour, but in the northeast we love this dish,” says Thanaporn. Lisa also ate the pad thai Mesa, Thanaporn says, a version made with tamarind paste, fish sauce, dried shrimp, and palm sugar tossed with rice noodles. “The next day Lisa’s manager came back to order pad thai Mesa, and mango salad to go,” she says.

“I quietly threw in some meatballs, which I know is her favorite street food.” (In a 2021 interview with Thai content creator Vuthithorn “Woody” Milintachinda, Lisa set off a massive 3,333 percent surge in Yuen Kin meatball sales after declaring them one of her favorite dishes.) A further testament to the northeastern cuisine at Mesa Thai: Chitthip Brüschweiler, Lisa’s mother, visited the restaurant on April 9.

She ordered pad thai Mesa, Lao-style papaya salad, and boat noodles served in a small bowl.Thanaporn, an early follower of the pop star, says she never imagined she would get the opportunity to meet Lisa. “She worked really hard for her dream, and she loves what she does,” Thanaporn says.

The same could be said for the intrepid Thai chef making Isan flavors bold and nostalgic enough to lure in Thailand’s biggest superstar.Mesa Thai is located at 3778 North Western Avenue, Unit 101, Hollywood, CA, and is open from 11:30 a.m.

to 9 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday; the restaurant is closed on Mondays.

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