The tall tulip glass came to the table gleaming like an albino margarita. Snow-white, searingly sweet, gloriously icy, this festival of fresh coconut juice was impossible to stop sucking once I locked lips on the straw.
It's easy to get lost in the moment at A Taste of Thai. And it's all the more pleasant after one meanders through an unappealing South Anchorage strip center to find it.
Stepping inside isn't quite like stepping through the looking glass, but the warm cocoon of gleaming browns and golds puts the commercial gaggle outside neatly out of mind.
Panida Watts, who runs the restaurant she owns with husband Glenn, is quite proud of the Thai ambiance, from the striking bas relief wall art, most carved from wood, to the didactic Buddhist figures in architectural headdresses.
Gilded elephants are so serene, they defy mocking as parodies. Candles flicker as if dancing to the notes of flute and dulcimer in the background. Servers in handmade Thai uniforms float from table to table.
Born and raised in Nakhon Nayok, northeast of Bangkok near the Khao Yai national park, Watts worked in the food industry in Thailand and in the U.S. for years before marrying and having a child. Now her child is in school, and with her husband's encouragement, she reached for her dream: opening her own restaurant.
On what have become yearly visits back home, she added to her own collection of Buddhist paintings and also found the blue-and-white tableware that beautifully cradles the curries, soups and salads that emerge from her kitchen.
The restaurant opened last May with a good-sized menu that allows diners to match a type of preparation with a meat of choice ($12.95 with tofu, chicken, pork or beef; $14.95 with shrimp). A Thai basil entree has a base of stir-fried bamboo shoots, mushrooms, onion, bell pepper and basil ($12.95 with tofu, chicken, pork or beef; $14.95 with shrimp).
Garlic and white peppercorn combined to give pork a divine resonance -- and a nice visual contrast with a surrounding bed of bright green and orange veggies -- but the same saucy rendition was a loser with halibut ($20), which seemed overcooked and unhappy to be there.
A better hali-bet, regulars at the next table said, is the halibut in red curry (another $20 special).
Crispy Fish ($12.95), we can tell you from our own tasting, is culinary genius. Chunks of catfish are deep-fried quickly to keep the fish succulent in its crisp crust. A garlic-lime dressing keeps the taste buds hopping as it draws in the fresh mango and other flavors that meet atop the lettuce leaves.
Less pleasing was a beef salad called Crying Tiger ($14.95), though I must fess up to a conditioned bias on this dish. I first sampled this dish at Renu's Thai restaurant in Houston, Texas, more years ago than I care to count: The beef was angry-red rare, the sauce danced with garlic and shrieked with chiles, a triumph of pain as pleasure.
I've come to fear I will never taste its like again. I certainly didn't here: This beef was too salty and too well-done, though pleasantly spiced otherwise.
If Crispy Fish was the hands-down winner at our table (and it was), a Friday-night special of pineapple and pumpkin curry studded with several nice-size shrimp ($16.95) was a close runner-up. Smart, unusual and lovely to behold, it was a worthy addition to a curry list that is A Taste of Thai's strong suit.
And pumpkin took another bow at the meal's end in a custard dessert. This pumpkin is not the big mama that's traditional at Halloween and Thanksgiving but a winter-squash relative. The flesh is firmer and less sweet, a double foil for the squishy block of honeylike custard. Yum!
Mango and sticky rice, sampled on another visit, was also delicious and nicely presented, with ripe fruit topping a mound of perfectly cooked sweet rice in a pool of warm coconut milk.
With a savory cup of hot Thai tea, either is a sublime end to a generally first-rate meal.
• Play dining reviewer Mike Peters can be reached at mpeters@adn.com.
A Taste of Thai
**
Location: 11109 Old Seward Highway (at O'Malley Road)
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed Sunday
Phone: 349-8424
By Mike Peters
mpeters@adn.com