Open daily 9am-9pm.

After six years in Los Angeles, I know there's nothing like the potential of a strip mall. While other people see dismal cookie-cutter storefronts, I know that a strip mall offers low enough rent for people to open up restaurants that don't have to cater to the whims of the general public. They can cater to a particular public instead. That's part of the reason that L.A. has Korean tofu specialty shops, Vietnamese places that specialize in "com tam" broken rice, or restaurants, it seems, for every state in Mexico. There is freedom in the box; from homogeneity emerges the specific.

Angkor Noodle is that kind of place, specializing in Cambodian food filtered through the lens of Cambodia's resident Chinese population. In the same place that you get noodle soups redolent of Southeast Asia--lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce-- you can also get dim sum from morning to night.

Angkor Noodle is hidden away in a tiny strip mall near 12th Avenue South and South Jackson Street, behind and between Viet-Wah and Thanh Vi, and co-owned by two restaurant veterans, Wing Tse (the former dim sum master of House of Hong) and Robert Ong. For years, eating at Monsoon, I'd noticed Ong--a tall, wiry guy with a sculpted helmet of hair. He cooked with the casual confidence of all the best line cooks I know; he clearly owned the wok.

Inside the restaurant, there's not much décor: just a few pictures of the Angkor Wat temple to set the scene. At lunch one day, it was packed with families, but it was perilously empty when we came in for a latish dinner. Ong shuttled back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room, making sure everything was going smoothly. He suggested that we get some traditional noodle soups, but after he'd taken our order, he showed he's no stranger to the special needs of Seattle diners; he headed back to the table to double-check: "Everybody eats pork? Everybody eats beef, yeah?"

The ziu chou noodle soup ($5.50) has that Asian surf-and-turf combo--little slices of pork intermingling with prawns, squid, and fish balls. I'll admit that I'm not too fond of the last ingredient--a little too chewy and fishy, even for me--but in this dish, the broth's the thing, hovering miraculously between the essences of fish and ginger and lemongrass. But the truly mind-blowing dish, to my taste, was the beef stew ($5.25). It's got tender hunks of braised meat and carrots decorating the tangle of noodles in the bottom of the bowl. The thick broth is dark Ragú-orange and redolent of oyster sauce, ginger, and lemon; the flavor hangs around long after each bite. "I'd take this over pho any day," my husband said.

Although I miss the element of surprise that I get when my dim sum arrives in steam carts, Angkor's dim sum, carried by hand from the kitchen, is delicious. Sometimes, the strength of dim sum is summed up by what it's not: A chivey shrimp potsticker ($2.50) is not gummy, but crackles with a crust of pan-toasted sesame seeds; the small chicken-stuffed egg roll ($1.95) is not too big, but daintily finger-sized and wholly crisp; the shrimp paste that's tucked into velvety sweet eggplant ($2.50) has not yet seized into the unchewable mass you sometimes find in similar dishes.

We passed on shark fin dumplings (fear of great white reprisal) and chicken feet (fear of bird toes), but enjoyed some other hearty dishes, slurping up herbaceous scallion noodle rolls ($2.15) and a leaf-wrapped package of sticky rice and sausage ($2.50) that delivered a serious pepper-liver kick. But our favorite dim sum made its way to our table without being listed on the menu. It was a glazed puff-pastry turnover stuffed with curried beef that ping-ponged nicely between sweet and spicy--a South-east Asian take on mincemeat pie.

Usually I'm glad when a meal is really cheap, but when a four-person dinner came in just under $26, I was a little sad to pay so little for a huge meal that I enjoyed so much. I'll make up for it, I suppose, in volume.