It sounds like a prank on the pasta gods, but even the most curmudgeonly noodleologist would have to admire the snap and chew and clingy, aromatic sauce of Xiao Ye’s khao soi radiatori. Alongside madeleines made from masa and rice flour and a textbook fior di latte gelato topped with Okinawan brown sugar, the mashup has found its footing on the menu at Louis Lin and Jolyn Chen’s Hollywood-neighborhood restaurant. The couple calls their food first-generation American cuisine. It’s autobiographical cooking, a way of collecting their heritage, professional training, and tastes into a menu that reflects America’s excitingly humongous range of cuisines. Lin, the chef, says the menu operates around a “skeleton” of European cooking techniques. This dish draws specifically from his time cooking at LA’s famously traditional pasta haven Felix, reimagining the Thai noodle soup with “foundational principles” and “sauce work” of a classic Italian pasta dish. 

Lime wedge: Khao soi always comes with a lime wedge. In the restaurant’s semiformal context, Lin says the cue for diners to get their hands dirty shifts the experience. It’s permission to dig in with elbows on the table.

Fresh herbs: Though slightly fussier than a side of herb sprigs, which you’re meant to pick yourself and stir in, Lin’s leafy mix of rough torn Thai basil and cilantro gets pretty close to the classic.

Chicken skins: In place of the bird’s nest of fried egg noodles you’ll find on most khao soi, Lin tops his dish with chicken skins slowly crisped in the oven. 

Tiny little vegetables: Lin skips the standard pickled mustard greens (he couldn’t find any he liked), swapping in the vegetal crunch of a millimeter dice of shallots, in the French brunoise style, and cilantro stems sliced finely like chives. 

Radiatori: A twentieth-century noodle unattached to a region or traditional dish, radiatori (Italian for “radiators”) is perfect to mess with. Lin makes his with durum wheat semolina, the pasta flour, which he imports directly from a mill in the Italian comune Cesole di Marcaria. 

Coconut yellow curry sauce: In place of khao soi’s yellow curry broth, a concentrated pasta sauce blends housemade curry paste heavy on the turmeric and a roasted chicken jus that’s extra sticky thanks to collagen-rich chicken feet. 

Braised chicken thighs: After slow-cooking in the yellow curry sauce, shredded thighs meet the boiled noodles and a splash of coconut cream and chile oil in the pan, where they’re tossed and simmered down around the pasta in the Italian style.