Because this is the Bay Area, we’ll always embrace any place serving excellent lunch specials with BBQ chicken or curries with a side of rice for under $13. Enter Vientian Cafe—the standout Lao, Thai, and Vietnamese spot in East Oakland. But also come here for the flavorful deep-fried rice with fermented pork ($12.95), the perfectly spicy, fresh papaya salad ($12.95), and the sweet-tangy angel wings ($10.95).

First, I visited Vientian Cafe, a rough-hewn eatery situated a few blocks outside the San Antonio neighborhood, on a barren block of Allendale. The food was uniformly spectacular and stunningly inexpensive. Baked sausage with lemongrass, onion, and chiles--a thin, churro-like cylinder, dark-brown, crusty, and cracked on a bed of raw shredded cabbage--and kao piak, a noodle soup with chicken, nutty fried garlic, and pork blood, particularly stood out.

You’ll find Thailand’s greatest hits on the menu at this family-run restaurant on the bottom floor of an East Oakland home, but you’re at an establishment named after the capital city of Laos. Would you order the steak at a seafood restaurant?. Turn your attention instead to the page listing “Lao specialties,” and make sure your order includes the superlative nam khao, a bountiful fried rice salad with fermented pork sausage.

A truly local spot, Vientian Café operates out of a family’s lime green home, where it stands out in a quiet residential neighborhood. The bright exterior matches the lively interior, where it easy to forget you are a customer and instead feel like a guest (literally) at someone’s home. The Laotian items are easy to spot among the Thai and Vietnamese dishes, since most of them come on a separate Lao specialties menu.

For a taste of Laos, visit Vientian Cafe in East Oakland for the coconut milk noodle soup (recommended with the blood cubes option). Or try Lao’s chicken noodle soup at Champa Garden near Lake Merritt. “When you eat in, there is an actual cake pan of toppings to choose from to add to your bowl,” one informant says.

Vientian Cafe offers a casual setting to indulge in Laotian, Vietnamese, and Thai specialties. Try their boat noodles, a flavorful broth brimming with rice noodles, meat, and fresh herbs, or a steaming plate of Pad See Ew for a comforting noodle fix.

The crispy rice salad arrives with an almost unfathomable amount of fresh herbs. The khao poon is almost sultry with coconut milk. The papaya salad looks black and tastes like fire.

Camber, the restaurant that preceded Lao Taé in Montclair Village, served some Indian, Thai, Lao, and Burmese dishes, plus some American bar food for good measure.