Kanomwaan Thai Gelato & Dessert Cafe – LA
In LA's Thai Town, a fine gelato, dessert, and drink shop inspired by classic Thai flavors and recipes
Back in 2021, Moom Maam established itself as California’s first Thai gelateria, initially at Hollywood’s Wat Thai Food Market, then at the weekly Los Angeles food festival Smorgasburg LA, and in September 2024 adding a brick-and-mortar shop at the Del Amo Fashion Center. Unique to the region and legitimately impressive, it spawned plenty of fans – and inspired competitors. Late in December 2023, long-established Thai restaurant Ruen Pair used an adjacent plaza space to open Kanomwaan, a gelato and drink parlor named after the Thai word for “sweet snacks.”
Brightly colored inside and out, Kanomwaan is located in LA’s Thai Town – blocks away from locally famed Jitlada – and similarly suffers from plaza limitations that make parking and seating somewhat challenging. There are around 15 wooden seats and stone-topped tables inside, flanking a large front counter and prep area with an illuminated overhead menu. Thai gelato scoops ($6 to $8.50), drinks ($7 to $8.50), shaved ice bowls ($15 to $18), and custard toasts ($11 to $13) are available, each typically served quickly with a smile from a small window on the counter’s right side.
The left side has a freezer with 10 gelatos – pandan milk, candle smoked & salty egg yolk, hojicha honey ball, sweet soy sauce toasted sesame, jasmine & matcha, earl grey Thai tea, melon chill, durian black sticky rice, mango sorbet, and coconut milk butterfly pea. Kanomwaan’s drinks, toasts, and shaved ice overlap a lot in flavors: Thai tea, matcha, black sesame, pandan, salted egg yolk, and mango sticky rice each can be had in more than one dessert, with ube, purple yam, and floral pink flavors popping up here and there.
Despite the conceptual appeal of many of these flavors, Kanomwaan’s execution didn’t wow us on Moom Maam levels. We tried three gelatos ($8.50), opting for the hugely unusual sweet soy sauce toasted sesame, coconut milk butterfly pea, and candle smoked & salty egg yolk; each tasted more of creamy milk than anything else, and the first scoop notably had no obviously detectable soy sauce flavor, with only scant sesame seeds mixed in. It wasn’t clear after the first few small bites which of the gelatos we were eating.
Other scoops were more obvious, but also not fantastic. Coconut milk butterfly pea gelato was – not surprisingly for anyone familiar with the blue tea – basically only coconutty, and not overwhelmingly so. Only the egg yolk scoop lived up to its name, starting as only vaguely custardy until we got to clumps of solid egg pieces that tasted more salty than smoky. Unlike Moom Maam, where most of the gelatos we’ve tried are strong and delightful, we wouldn’t re-order any of the scoops we tried at Kanomwaan; their best trait was their larger-than-average scoop size.
Drinks were similarly underwhelming. A mango sticky rice drink ($8) looked good and started fine with a coconutty cream top, mango pureed core, and a little toasted rice garnish, but tasted somewhat flat and became progressively less enjoyable after discovering bland rice at the cup’s bottom. Butterfly pea lemonade soda ($7) wasn’t special apart from its color-shifting trick – blue tea shifts to purple when mixed with the lemonade – but was a fine carbonated take on an Arnold Palmer.
While we won’t be rushing back to Kanomwaan, we did see a bowl of the mango sticky rice shaved ice, which looked at least large enough to justify an $18 price, and the five different custard toast flavors were enough to grab our attention, as well. If we’re in the neighborhood again, we’d consider giving it another shot for those items, though we’ll be saving our Thai gelato dollars for Moom Maam.
Stats
Price: $
Service: Counter
Open Since: December 2023
Address
5261 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
213.644.9670
Instagram: @kanomwaanla