Angkorian Pikestaff adds early weekday excitement to Market on 8th

Decisions do not come easy inside National City’s Market on 8th. A year since the food hall opened, its vendors have proven themselves masters of temptation. Would you rather indulge in the rich pork bone broth of Weapon Ramen? Wolf down a pile of surf and turf lumpia at Serbesa kitchen? Pick your favorite po’boy at Smitty’s BBQ? Watch closely, and you can see such dilemmas play out in the mind of customers who stroll in for lunch. Some of them careen like pinballs from one stall to another, as if scoping the options available on the next menu will make a decision easier, rather than much, much harder.

But on a Monday or Tuesday, you’ll start to notice different set of customers: those who bee-line straight to the Café Indonesia.

Now, I understand from previous visits that Café Indonesia’s a winning choice any day of the week, as it straddles Indonesian and Filipino cuisines to bring something distinct to our corner of the food world. But what’s happening these two days per week is a little different. For the past couple months, my favorite non-conventional chef, Socheath Sun, has been bringing her pan-Asian pop-up restaurant, Angkorian Pikestaff, to the Café Indonesia kitchen, on what are traditionally dining’s slowest days: Monday and Tuesday.

Some might remember Sun launching Angkorian Pikestaff — named in reference to medieval Khmer warriors of her Cambodian culture — as a lunch-only pop-up in East Village, some three years ago. There, she’d offer one, maybe two dishes per day, for take-out or limited sidewalk seating, during a narrow service window. Guests could order through the chef’s Instagram.

No longer in East Village, the biggest difference brought by Angkorian Pikestaff’s new, two-days-per-week address, is that Sun now serves an expanded menu, running from lunch through dinner. Which makes it easier to fit a visit in to a busy schedule, but brings us right back around to tough decision-making.

What we have here is an endlessly creative chef. In East Village, she was unlikely to serve the same dish twice, prone to bouncing between, or mashing up, dishes from a wide variety of traditions. Guests would find Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and Indonesian flavors, as well as Cambodian. Her creations might feature meat, seafood, or both; and they were just as likely to be vegan.

In National City, Sun has settled down to some degree, in the sense her menu often returns customer favorites — for example, a fried pork toast snack ($8.50) that puts ground, seasoned meat on a baguette. However, the nine or ten item menu still veers different directions from week to week, meaning you might find variations on her well-loved bánh mì sandwiches, likely to feature eggplant, or one of the chef’s made-from-scratch meat substitutes ($14). Often spotted is a honey walnut shrimp brioche sandwich ($15), though the Monday I showed up, I was pleased to find the Macau pork chop bun ($13), a deceptively simple hot sandwich seasoned with five-spice, chili oil, and fermented mustard, served on a bolillo roll.

I don’t know that bolillos are easy to come by in Macau, but it proved a great bread choice for this sandwich. And it suggests that chef Soch would rather improve a recipe idea with ingredients at her disposal than get mired in strict traditionalism. While she can — and frequently does — introduce customers to authentic dishes we’d never otherwise encounter in San Diego, such as a Cambodian chicken curry ($15.75), Sun also has got a knack for reinterpreting familiar dishes in ways that make them feel fresh.

For example, a simple dish like noodles with garlic and chili oil gets a little flavor upgrade courtesy of shaved parmesan ($13). Fine on their own, I took the chef’s advice to combine them with her grilled sirloin steak skewers, seasoned in the peppery, Cambodian lok lak style (+$11).

I would find myself debating with another longtime Angkorian Pikestaff customer which must be better, my beef and noodles order, or her choice of Taiwanese chicken tender wrap, which sees crispy fried chicken strips wrapped in a tortilla with a creamy Thai basil sauce ($13).

Because, I was certainly not alone in seeking out this new, National City location. Both before and after I ordered, the Café Indonesia counter would be approached by guests who knew the chef from her years in East Village. They were showing up at Market on 8th, some for the first time, to continue following Sun’s journey through Asian flavors, and beyond. That decision, at least, is a no-brainer.