IN 2019, JUSTIN PICHETRUNGSI made the life-changing decision to leave a successful career as an art director at Walt Disney Imagineering and take over the Sherman Oaks restaurant his parents founded in 1981. In his hands, Anajak Thai straddles parallel worlds. The mainstay menu preserves the legacy of Ricky Pichetrungsi, Justin’s father, whose recipes coalesce his Thai upbringing and Cantonese heritage. Justin’s creative efforts — the Thai Taco Tuesday phenomenon he introduced in 2020, the omakase meals he serves that use a Japanese format to reexamine Southeast Asian flavors, a wine list that summarizes Angelenos’ disparate tastes — reframe the neighborhood institution as a seat of innovation.

At Thai Taco Tuesday, or #TTT as Justin tags it on Instagram, expect weekly whims — perhaps blue corn tortillas cradling Ora King salmon dressed with purple cabbage, a slick of mayo, chili crisp and nam jim, or tostadas overlaid with rounds of lap cheong, brightened with mint, or lobes of kanpachi dotted with salmon roe. All the while, the restaurant’s primary menu is tighter, truer, stronger. Fried chicken wings have a tauter sour-sweet edge in the tamarind glaze; Massaman brisket curry, lush and aromatic, comforts profoundly. Fried chicken, a newer restaurant staple, is sheathed in rice-flour batter and scattered with fried shallots. The bird is prepared in the style of Nakhon Si Thammarat, a city in Southern Thailand where Rattikorn Pichetrungsi, Justin’s mother, has family. An optional side of caviar is very much Justin’s idea of embellishment.

The cooking, in whichever format you experience it, evinces skill and delight. In July we named Anajak Thai as the L.A. Times’ Restaurant of the Year.

• 14704 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 501-4201, anajakthai.com