That Luang Kitchen Lao Cuisine

This is my favorite Lao restaurant in the Bay Area. Authentic Lao food AND the best Vietnamese sandwiches in the area. Try the Fried Rice balls (Nam Kao), Lao Sausage with sticky rice and Larb salad. The papaya salad is amazing too. Don’t go anywhere else for Lao food. This place will leave you full and satisfied. Their ingredients and food is authentic.
This place will not disappoint. Your search is done. Go there!
I’ve been going for over 10 years, before it was a full service restaurant.

When you order take out here, do they normally just hang up and not ask for a name or number or even tell you how long til your order is ready? Well… guess I’m going to wait 20 mins and see if it’s ready lol. 3 stars cuz I haven’t tried the food yet but I also don’t know if my order is processing.
Okay, they did have my order ready as soon as I got there and everything is delicious. I got the papaya salad, Lao sausage, Kao poon and Kao soy (don’t judge lol).

This is a gem in San Pablo. It’s rare to get authentic Lao food. My favorite is the Hot dark Broth vegetable bamboo shoot soup and the steamed catfish.

This place wasnt as bad as i thought it would be, me and my boyfriend ordered the combo viet sandwiches but i had better. But i also ordered their eggrolls and they were really good! I’ll go back and try more of their food.

I grew up with Lao and Thai cuisine and this is one of my go-​to places for exactly that. The food here is authentic and the flavors are great. The noodle dishes are all good and I especially like the pad thai and som tam. Weirdly, this is my absolute favorite place for Vietnamese sandwiches. The combo sandwich is the only option and it comes with cold cuts of meat, which I like a lot better than the bbq sandwiches they have everywhere else.

Where to start?
This place is delicious, their Lao food is very authentic and all their ingredients are fresh.
Food: you won’t be disappointed, my favorite is the Kao Soy and the Lad Na both very delicious, their Vietnamese sandwiches are the best in all of Richmond, the papaya salad or Som Tum is so authentic just like it was made straight from Laos itself. The Phở was fantastic ordered the one with beef and the soup was out of this world. The Larb just like the papaya salad was authentic love the spices so fresh (both the papaya salad and Larb can be ordered as medium hot or spicy) don’t be afraid to try the other dishes they offer.
Service: very friendly and welcoming the waiter is a great guy, very attentive. As soon as I walked in he handed me my menu with a smile. Wait time is average. but the wait is worth it.
Pricing: pricing is fair they offer a good amount of food for their price and don’t forget their ingredients are all fresh.
Don’t judge a book by its cover, the place might seem empty but the food is AMAZING I highly recommend this place if you love Lao food or want to experience it. If you are ever in the Richmond/​San Pablo area don’t pass up the opportunity to experience authentic and delicious Lao food.

HORRIBLE Customer Service! I went there wanting to order food to go, but instead the owner turned me away. This is a first for me. His reason was that they were very busy with to go back orders so it’ll be an hour wait for the food. WTF! Oh come on! You can’t accomodate a customer that is standing in front of you, I think you better closed for the day. The place was absolutely empty with one table occupied. Wow! Really! He just lost himself some business and I will not step a foot in that door again. Great job! Goodbye!

Wonderful delicious food around Richmond. Friendly service with a nice smile.
I went there three times and I always ordered Laab duck and papaya salad.

Very good and cheap authentic Laotian food. This place is a must if you love Laotian food. Definitely a hole-​in-​the-​wall restaurant. The owner runs it and his wife is the chef. I usually get the nam khao, pad lao (same as the pad thai but this comes with eggs on top and pork blood), the soups are delicious — kao soy and kao piak, and papaya salad. My friend ordered the pad se ew with chicken. This place has a huge empty room on one side where the owner says they have dancing on Saturdays. If you don’t want to check out the dancing and singing, come for the Laotian food because it is delicious!

Food: Good just like the other reviews said but in my opinion, over priced for their portions.
Service: The owner was our server. One thing I didn’t like about the service was that he set two water bottles down once we were seated without telling us we’d be charged for them if we opened it. I thought he gave us the water bottles in replacement for not giving us water in a cup but to my surprise, it showed up on our check.
I mean it was $ 2, nothing to make a big fuss over so we just paid for it and left.
Unprofessional but what can you expect from going to a «hole in the wall» type of restaurant. 4 stars for food. Deduct one bc of service.
I’d definitely go back for the food, but take it to-​go next time.

I honestly have to say that it’s my 2^nd time going to this place and I swear to you I have not like the customer service they give. The owner himself was rude. I would not even tell people to come here. Thank goodness I live out in Sacramento and don’t have to deal with these kinds of restaurants. I would definitely not recommend this place nor ever step my foot back into it.

That Luang Kitchen is a bit of a hole-​in-​the-​wall, dive, but the food tastes amazing. Having lived in Thailand for seven years, their Som Tum (papaya salad) and BBQ chicken tastes exactly how it tastes in Thailand… it was like I was transported right there. Having said that, I know That Luang is a Laotian restaurant, but Thai and Lao cuisines are very similar. Even the language is very similar too. In any case, I’ll definitely be going back. They have chicken/​beef laarb salad, which is another dish I miss from my time in Thailand.

I’m Laos n really enjoyed the food. Too bad the Larb duck wasn’t available raw. I would’ve killed it. I recommend going here if ur into thai food. Lao food has a better appreciation of SE Asian cooking. Was almost like my MOM’S cooking. The papaya salad is really good n the Vietnamese sandwich was good also.

I’m lucky to have friends who know about these little gems. It’s a proverbial «hole in the wall» but the food is fantastic. The server, who I assume was the owner, was very friendly too. Give this place a try. You won’t be disappointed!

Love their food. If you are a big Thai fan check this place out. The Laotian cuisine is more complex and interesting than 90% of the Thai places I’ve tried in the East Bay over the past 30 years. That Luang Kitchen is a gem. The owner is a cool guy that’s been in this space for 10 years. I had Kow Poon w chicken and it was superb. Owner made me promise to try his signature dish, Mok Pla Catfish. Will do on my next trip!

If you want authentic Lao food, DINE here.
Nothing beats the freshness of the herbs and the spice was just right!
We had papaya salad, beef laab, BBQ chicken, and their signature noodle dish, khao poon. It was so good, that there were no left overs. The portion size was just right.
The price was even better. We will definitely be returning for more cravings of their authentic Lao dishes.

That Luang Kitchen is my kind of place. Going to this restaurant feels as though you were visiting your grandparents’ house. To some people, this charm is lost (especially to those ones who are in a hurry or are very hungry) but not to me. I find myself really quite smitten.
They are not like other restaurants in that they seem to exist not to cater to diners (i.e. to make money), but rather, they seem to exist because there is a kitchen, there is a person who knows how to cook, and they want to extend their hospitality. As I said, it feels like visiting your or your friend’s grandparents’ house. I am not sure if this were their SOP, but when we came in, there was only a husband-​wife duo running the place, with the husband doing the waiting and helping with the chopping and the wife doing the cooking (I actually kind of peeked in the kitchen while looking for our host to make sure that we did not have any misunderstanding about my order.). Because they are very much a mom-​and-​pop operation, the service can be slow. As a matter of fact, I overheard our host telling the next group that came in after us that they may have to wait about half an hour to be served because they were preparing our orders (I should note that there were no other diners at the place.).
Our host was very pleasant and very patient with our questions and made suggestions when we mentioned that this was our first foray into Laotian cuisine. We finally settled on BBQ pork, pad lao, pad thai, and papaya salad. All are very good, but a note to people who are not fond of spicy foods: everything had a little kick with the exception of the pad lao. Even the pad thai was slightly spicy, but not overly so since the daughter was able to eat her whole plate without drinking a lot.
The prices are really quite reasonable, but take heed that they give you a bottle of water once you sit but will not tell you that they charge $ 1 for them. That is the only thing that kind of bothered me, but not so much that if turned me off of them.
They are quite a drive from me but I will be back. Especially since our charming host told us about the Saturday night Lao-​Thai parties that they throw.

Good vietnamese sandos!!! pretty cheap and fast as well

I’ve been coming here for their sandwiches since my high school days, cutting class to get their sandwich and such, lol
This place use to be a little store before they’ve made it to a restaurant. I love their papaya salad, whenever I order it mild Laos style, it’s always SPICY but sh*t still hella good so it never bothered me. Their kasoy & kapiet is pretty good! no doubt I wouldn’t come back. hehe

Yes, they do have good Vietnamese sandwiches. They may well be the best in San Pablo, but I’m not sure if there’s anywhere else in San Pablo to get a Vietnamese sandwich!
Otherwise, if you ask for mild, NOT spicy, you will still get spicy.