Restaurant review by: Josh Schaffer
One may understandably question the validity of a restaurant located at an airport. One would most certainly question their sanity when that restaurant happens to serve more exotic cuisine. Rest assured that Typhoon, located at The Santa Monica Airport, is more than up to the task. In addition to serving various known Asian fare (one can find Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Filipino dishes on the menu, maybe more) they also serve a particularly unique fare – insects. My friends and I had been talking about trying this for some time and we came away with mixed feelings.
The restaurant serves Singapore-style scorpions on shrimp toast, stir-fried Taiwanese crickets and stir-fried silk worm larvae with various dipping sauces.
We ordered one of everything. The scorpions came out first and I must say they were kind of like a crunchy shrimp on top of bread and it was difficult to get a reading on the flavor beyond the shrimp toast, but we all found them decent.
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The favorite of the group were the crickets. They had a crunchy, light toasted nut flavor that went well with the fried garlic and chili pepper that accompanied it.
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Lastly, in every sense of the word were the larvae. Their crunchy outer shell kept the soft waxy flavor hidden, but the generally spicy sauces couldn’t do enough to mask the earthy flavor within. There was a nice mole sauce that helped but in the end, I can’t endorse this dish.
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Exotics aside everything else there was excellent. The Filipino calamari and Mongolian beef were favorites, the service was good and we all agreed we’d go back and maybe get another round of crickets.
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The restaurant is located at:
3221 Donald Douglas Loop South
Santa Monica, CA 90405
[singlepic id=69 w=320 h=240 float=]Josh Schaffer