LAX-C is a giant Thai food warehouse north of Downtown LA where local restauranteurs can stock up on vats of soy sauce, boxes of frozen chicken parts and 50-lb bags of MSG. The rest of us -- or maybe you could use a gigantic sack of cake flour, I don't know -- can buy Asian groceries in moderate quantities, browse the cookware section and enjoy handmade Thai food, including an amazing array of desserts.

The place is called "the Thai Costco" around the Internets and as soon as I walked in, I understood why. The vast aisles are stocked with barrels of this and pallets of that -- but almost everything is also available in normal-sized portions at prices comparable to other Asian grocery stores around town. The freezer section has weird meat parts, all manner of dumpling and a few exotic ingredients I was tempted to buy and keep on hand, like frozen banana leaves and coconut milk cream. The rice selection is especially impressive, offering just about any Asian rice you might be craving (Japanese, jasmine, brown, black, rice mixed with other grains, broken rice) in both small and large bags.

I browsed the cookware section for awhile, checking out the woks and the granite mortar and pestle sets, and eying the hotpots, thoughts of tom yum gai dancing through my head. There are also a couple huge shelves stuffed with all the Styrofoam and plastic packing you could ever want, if you're thinking of starting your own take-out operation. I'm not, so I moved on to the fish. If you buy fresh fish at LAX-C, they'll fry it up for you on the spot. (I'm not sure what happens then -- do you get some chili sauce and eat it there or do you take it home to eat later? It would get soggy in transit, but who's going to eat a whole fried fish on the spot? Clearly I have many questions about this.)

But maybe the best reason to visit LAX-C is for the prepared food, sold both indoors and on the outside patio. Inside you'll find hot dishes like khao mun gai (Hainanese chicken and rice) and various curries, along with lots of desserts. I bought three banana-stuffed cakes of sticky black rice cooked in coconut milk and wrapped in banana leaves. Yum inside of yum cooked in YUM. There were many other jellies and sweet rices and coconut shreds wrapped up on the counter, and while browsing you can peek into the kitchen where everything is being made. People sit and eat their meals or sweets at the tables placed between the fish department and the registers. Romantic, no. But this is the Thai Costco we're talking about.

Outside is where the real magic happens. And by magic, I mean kanom krok. Kanom krok are small, spherical pancakes filled with oozy, delicious coconut custard. Made on big cast iron pans which resemble the ones used to make takoyaki, Japan's infamous octopus balls, they taste like coconut rainbows and custard moonbeams. My favorite kanom krok ever are made by a seller in Chiang Dao, the small town in Northern Thailand where my dad lives. Mae Ting's Coconut Cakes were not nearly as beautiful as those kanom krok -- they were lacking that golden, crisp pancake skin (mmm...pancake skin...) -- but the gushy custard insides made them a worthy contender.

On the patio you can also buy grilled meat skewers and som tam, that addictive green papaya salad, pounded right in front of you with a heavy mortar and pestle. It's probably the closest you'll get to a real Thai street meal in our fair city, and definitely worth the trip.

LAX-C
1100 N Main St
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(323) 343-9000