Wendy T.
Yelp
4.5 stars for the food and an overall 4 star experience-- situated in a cool modern building with its own (tiny) parking lot, SALA was popping on a Saturday night.
Service was pretty cold when it was busy-- after standing directly in front of the cashier area and making eye contact with multiple people, no one acknowledged me, smiled, or said to wait for more than 7 minutes. Someone finally asked me if I had a reservation. As walk-ins, we waited 1 hour. The space is small so it was a little awkward with more and more people piling in and waiting while everyone stood and stared at the nearby diners at tables 3 feet away.
Food wise, presentation was beautiful and dinner was overall delicious!
*Truffle cauliflower: Pipping hot pillows of whole cauliflower florets! A little sweet, really enjoyable and unique.
*Curry puffs: flaky exterior with extremely soft interior. The filling is almost a homogenous paste and quite sweet.
*Brussels: nicely cooked in terms of texture, garlicky, but wished there was more of an acidity or kick-- whether fish sauce, chili, balsamic, etc. probably wouldn't order again.
*Soft shell crab: a big soft shell crab! Super crispy coating; the arms are extremely fried to the point they just taste like fried batter, but the body part was soft and meaty, yum! We didn't like the sauce that it came with though.
*Crab fried rice: came steaming and was so scrumptious! The fried rice part was executed really well, tasty and not too oily or salty, and it tasted like crab. There was a generous amount of crab lumps but the meat itself didn't really taste of anything. But yay, protein~~ Definitely ordering again!
*Yum woon sen: like the name suggests, this was definitely full of yum! Bright and refreshing, and a little bit of spicy, this was served warm to my surprise (usually cold, but I'm not complaining!). The scallops and shrimp were awesome, but the squid was a little on the chewier side. This one was my favorite of the night!
*Butter shrimp and scallop noodles: the shrimp and scallop were again amazingly cooked, but we weren't a fan of the sweet sauce (tasted straight up like sweet chili sauce or hoisin). Would pass on this one. The noodles themselves without the sauce were nice!
*Kao soy: the curry soup tasted just like a sweet coconut curry one would eat with rice, addicting! The meat was very tender but not very flavorful by itself-- that's what the yummy sauce is for! I personally would have preferred a chewier noodle than egg pasta, but it was still tasty~
Service: seemed a bit inefficient, everyone was doing different things, and we saw many seated tables forgotten (no orders taken yet, etc). There was no designated person to bus the tables so despite a growing crowd of waiting patrons, there were quite a few tables that waited to be cleaned at all times. Once we sat down, we had to ask for someone to take our orders and for our waters to be refilled a couple of times. But once the dinner rush cleared and quieted down, the staff stopped by to talk to us and actually smiled! They're definitely busy recently especially with HRW and some viral social media exposure. Our food came out relatively quickly by that time too. I was super turned off by the service initially, so I was definitely happy that the food was very tasty! I think SALA would benefit from an online wait system of some sort (Yelp waitlist) so that people can leave and be reminded 10 min or so before their table is ready, preventing an hangry horde of people staring down all the workers and diners and stressing them out?
They have a parking lot with maybe 14 spaces but once those are filled, you probably have to go find parking in the nearby neighborhoods. Definitely give SALA a try, and *definitely* get a reservation-- you'll save the hanger and the awkwardness! We will be returning with a reservation or for takeout!