Lined up like a display at an international fair, Thai Pagoda, Simply Homemade Dinners, Comminiello’s Meats and Deli, and Kabob Station form a vibrant multi-ethnic food scene in a strip mall on 120th Avenue and Pecos Street in Westminster.
The shopping center has been there almost 30 years, but it’s a little hard to see. “People drive by here 50 miles an hour,” says chef Houyuan Luo, who has run Thai Pagoda restaurant with her husband for the past three years.
Next door lies Simply Homemade Dinners, Carol Swearman’s make-it-and-take-it dinner prep store. She will celebrate her third anniversary here with an open house June 21.
George Comminiello says business has been pretty good in the 29 years that he’s been catering and making sub sandwiches here. The shop is “pretty much the same since we opened the door,” says Comminiello, taking a moment from joshing with a local cop in his deli, with display coolers full of fine-looking steaks, all kinds of cold cuts and frozen pasta. He uses his mother’s meatball recipe and still bakes all the sub bread and kaiser rolls daily.
“I never had anybody but family,” says Comminiello, whose grandsons, Ryan and Shaun Jugert (below), work with him now. “I attribute a lot of our success to that.”
When he’s ready for a break from cappicola and provolone, all he has to do is walk out of his deli and turn left for chicken shawarma (and hookah!) or right for pad Thai.
Although Luo is Chinese — born in Hong Kong — her mother taught her to cook a variety of neighboring cuisines. “The people from Korea, Vietnam and Thailand, they are strong on the spices — they love curry and fish sauce,” she says. “In the south, because it’s hot, the food is more light and a little bit sweet. They use a lot of seafood because they are on the coast.”
Her pad Thai is not too sweet, a common complaint in many American Thai restaurants. Rather, it balances the salty fish sauce with a sweet undertone, and plenty of shrimp, chicken and egg.
On one visit, our waitress said her favorite dish was the eggplant in garlic sauce, and we were glad we listened. The meat-like eggplant chunks absorbed the intense, dark sauce and the rice, molded in a heart shape, soaked up the rest.
At lunch, the portions and prices are manageable — right around $6 and just enough to finish and not have leftovers to lug back to the office.
120th and Pecos
Multinational strip mall Comminiello’s Meats and Deli, 303-451-8432; Kabob House, 303-451-1595; Simply Homemade Dinners, 303-346-6374; Thai Pagoda, 303-252-1780
