After months of delays, Robata owner Thom Chantharasy has finally opened the doors at his Laotian-Thai restaurant Han-Lao, the first restaurant in St. Louis to focus on Laotian cuisine. The Brentwood restaurant’s first night of business was November 19.

Chantharasy took much of the inspiration for Han-Lao’s menu from the food of his youth. (His mother was born in Laos; his father was Vietnamese, but spoke Lao.) “I just picked the things I think people will like,” he said. “I picked a lot of things that we used to eat for lunch when I was growing up. And the kind of things that people made when you went to a birthday party—things that were easy to share.” Han-Lao also features a number of Thai-influenced dishes. “I’ve always wanted to open a Laotian restaurant,” Chantharasy said. "I would have done this one straight Laotian, but I feel like a lot of people still don’t know what Laos food is, even though it’s very similar to Thai food. I had to throw in the Thai part just to get people interested.”

× Expand At Han-Lao, a sampler-size plate of red chicken curry as served on opening night.

× Expand Nam khao, one of Chantharasy's favorite childhood dishes

On Han-Lao’s first night of business, Chantharasy served guests sampler plates featuring a number of these dishes, including the nam khao ($8.95). “When I go home, I always ask my mom to make nam khao,” he said. “It’s a cold rice salad with pickled pork. For the restaurant, the pork is optional, because some people might be kind of worried about pickled pork, but that’s the way you would actually eat it.”

× Expand Larb gai - scoop some chicken onto the lettuce to create a wrap, then eat it with your hands.

The larb gai ($8.95) is a cold pulled-chicken salad with sharp, fresh flavors from red onions, herbs, and bean sprouts. For an extra $1, you can add sticky rice, a Laotian staple. The sticky rice is a simple addition, but it helps bring out so much extra flavor from the other ingredients, particularly when combined with the crisp lettuce.

× Expand Beef jerky with sticky rice

Sticky rice pops up frequently on the menu, and again as an optional add-on with the beef jerky ($6.95). It’s worth the extra dollar. The jerky is marinated in the sweet house sauce and served with a scoop of jeow bong chili paste, which is deep, full of complex flavors, and hot. The jeow bong also appears alongside the Lao sausage ($5.95).

For Chantharasy, one motivation for opening Han-Lao was to help his two children connect with the Laotian part of their roots. “They love the sticky rice," he says. "You steam it in a basket instead of steaming it in a rice cooker. I don't always have time to do that when they ask for it. So one day, I looked outside the window and I saw this space and I was like, ‘You know what, why not open a restaurant? And when you guys get hungry, you can just go over there and get it.’”

The menu doesn’t distinguish too overtly between Thai and Laotian dishes, partly because of the overlap between the cuisines, particularly between northeastern Thai cooking and Laotian food. Chantharasy says both incorporate sweet and sour flavors, using lots of coconut milk, citrus, and brown sugar in their cooking. If you’re familiar with Thai food, you’ll recognize names on the menu like red and yellow curries ($8.95), tom yum goong ($5.95), and pad thai ($9.95).

× Expand Pad Thai, a street food staple popular throughout Thailand.

Chantharasy says the main difference between the two cuisines comes down to one ingredient used commonly in both. “Laotian people like the fish sauce a little bit more,” he said. “Some people say that the funkier it is, the better Laos people like it. From the papaya salad, you can tell the difference between the two. The Laotian side is very spicy—you can taste the fish sauce and the funk. If you go for the Thai version, it's more citrus, more sweet, and it's just not spicy.”

If you want to focus on exploring Han-Lao’s Laotian offerings, Chantharasy’s advice is to lean toward ordering dishes you haven’t heard of before. “If you ever eat Thai, you kind of know what you get in Thai restaurants,” he said. “But when you see something on this menu and you’re like, ‘Wow, what is this? I’ve never seen this before’—hopefully those are the things where people would figure out what’s Thai and what’s from Laos.”

Han-Lao also offers a number of desserts, including coconut sticky rice with mango ($7) and Laos-style Jello ($4). There are a range of bubble teas, which can be spiked with rum for an extra $2, and served with or without tapioca pearls. The Thai ice tea looks likely to become popular, as do the cocktails like the Lao Bloody Mary ($9), which includes vodka, soy sauce, fish sauce, sriracha, shrimp, and bacon. Beers range from $3–$5.50, and 11 wines are available by the glass starting at $7.