By Flavor & The Menu
May 6, 2021

Lars Taylor

The Honey Paw’s Crispy Rice Salad exemplifies the restaurant’s modern Asian sensibility, offering assertive and intriguing flavors against a satisfying balance of soft and crispy textures. Chef de Cuisine Lars Taylor describes it as his take on the Laotian nam khao. “It’s an introduction to a dish that many people haven’t had before,” he says.

Taylor credits the Crispy Rice Salad’s success to its mix of textures and balance of flavors. He combines jasmine rice with coconut milk, toasted coconut, lime leaf and red curry paste, then forms it into balls and deep fries them. Once crispy, he breaks these apart, arranging the pieces in a ring over a bed of baby kale, sour sausage, fried shallots, pickled ginger, turmeric, cilantro, mint, basil and roasted peanuts. The salad is coated with a dressing of fish sauce, fried shallots, garlic and chiles, palm sugar, tamarind and lime juice. It’s crowned with a fried egg.

“It hits all of the flavor notes,” says Taylor. “The fish sauce provides funk, lime juice gives it acidity that cuts through the fattiness of the egg yolk, dried chiles add heat, and palm sugar sweetens it just enough.”