Go ahead and Thai One On

At Thai One On, Mystic's promising new Thai restaurant, you can choose how spicy you'd like each dish. One star makes you a coward, the menu says, while two mean you're merely cautious. Three stars qualify you as adventurous, and four, if you can handle the heat, rank you as native Thai.

Call me adventurous then. And Thai One On, with a large menu full of flavors that demand attention, is a good place for a culinary adventure.

Mine started with the tom kha gai, three stars, which was just adventurous enough to clear my sinuses without obscuring the rich, tangy, velvety coconut broth that makes this my favorite soup in the world. Tom kha gai is a measuring stick I use to compare Thai restaurants, and although this one ($5) was not the best I've ever had, its one-two punch of lime and galangal delivered sufficient pop to make my mouth water for more.

We chose three stars as well for the Tiger's Tear appetizer ($7) and found we were pushing the limits. Sniffing our way through several bites of tender grilled steak with onion and scallions, all sliced ultra-thin and touched with a salty-sweet chili sauce atop crisp lettuce, we resolved to downshift the heat for our entrées.

In the meantime, we comforted our palates with the spring rolls ($7). Paper-thin rolls were wrapped tightly around minced pork, crab meat, and shrimp, then fried crispy and served with a sweet chili sauce on the side.

We ate our entrées family-style, sharing four dishes - the best of them was the pad bai gra prow ($14). Two stars bestowed the perfect heat, balancing the slightly sweet chili sauce that dressed tender, thin slices of beef sautéed with fragrant basil, red peppers, and scallions and served with white rice.

Beef was the right choice for this dish, but it and most others may be ordered instead with chicken, pork, squid (add $1), or shrimp ($2).

We chose chicken, wisely, for the pad preow warn ($13), a sautéed medley of onion, scallion, pepper, cucumber, carrot, tomato, and pineapple in a sweet and sour sauce, also with rice on the side. We were pleased to find the sauce was not excessively viscous or syrupy-sweet like the cheap variety served in Chinese restaurants. This dish was a nice counterpoint to the spicier entrées.

Squid was the wrong choice for the kang keow warn, or green curry ($14), with peppers, bamboo shoots, peas, broccoli, and string beans. I would order this next time with chicken, which might soak up the homemade coconut curry sauce more than the rubbery, impermeable squid could. At two stars, the curry packed good heat, but I was disappointed to feel the burn more in the back of my throat than in my mouth. The sauce smelled a bit too strongly of anise, no doubt from all that Thai basil, and was more gray than green. The kitchen earns praise for cooking the vegetables in this dish (and in the others) lightly enough to retain their crunch.

Each entrée came in a generous portion, but they all needed more rice on the side, especially the curry with all its sauce. This has bothered me at other Thai restaurants as well. Give us more rice, all of you.

The pad Thai ($12), another measuring stick for Thai restaurants, hit its mark. To please the least adventurous eater at the table, we ordered ours without shrimp but then devoured the entire heaping pile of stir-fry noodles with pork bits and egg, rather large strips of scallion, fresh and succulent sprouts, and a heavy topping of crushed peanuts. A good pad Thai should satisfy the carb-craving monster inside with a thick, stick-to-your-ribs taste. This one did that. Some pad Thais leave an oily, overly fried aftertaste. This one did not. It was missing, however, the lime wedges on the side, which I enjoy squeezing on the noodles for a citrus accent.

A side order of egg fried rice ($2) was fluffy and mild.

For dessert, I tried something new - kuay buad shee ($3.50), chunks of banana in coconut milk with tapioca. The dull sweetness grew on me from the first spoonful to the last, but it could not compare to the decadence of our fried ice cream (we ordered coconut) in a tempura batter ($5).

Throughout the meal, our waitress was excellent. Soft-spoken and polite, she offered recommendations, showed strong knowledge of the menu, and sought answers to our questions. I'd only suggest telling customers about the nightly specials; while walking to the men's room, I saw the sign advertising frog legs that night and wished I'd known.

Thai One On opened in July and celebrates its grand opening on October 29, from 5 to 7 p.m. Under the guidance of Molly Phrasavath, the wife of co-owner Ken Vongsa (of New London's Bangkok City), the kitchen is so far serving up food that is sure to please Thai fans and keep the other Thai
restaurants in Mystic and beyond looking over their shoulders.