TASTE: Sugar and spice

Lay off the former but embrace the latter at Archi’s

Max Jacobson

Archi's Thai Bistro is the second restaurant owned by one-time cab driver Archi Silpasuvun, a man who, in many ways, represents the embodiment of the American dream. He worked for years as a taxi driver before opening a business. Now it appears that his investments are going to pay handsome dividends.

Archi's Kitchen, his first effort, is a sweet little place on West Flamingo. So many people supported his take on authentic Thai cooking that he was able to open here, in the city's hot southwest. This restaurant is bigger and more impersonal than the original. But some homey touches haven't been sacrificed.

The room is decorated with white louvre windows, chests of drawers and Asian crafts, giving it the feel of a giant living room. The chairs are nicely upholstered, and the servers are mainly charming young Thai women.

On the menu, there is a symbol that reads "100 percent authentic Thai." I beg to differ. As much as I like this restaurant and admire the owner, many of these dishes have been sweetened for the Western palate. Side sauces are distressingly sweet and, clearly, all the curries—and most of the stir-fries—are made with added sugar, and lots of it.

Still, there is a way around this seeming catch-22. Appetizers, for instance, are all delicious, and best when eaten without the cloying and insipid sauces that come with them. Try fish cake—tod mun on an authentic Thai menu—and you'll see what I mean.

The fish cakes are deep-fried to a golden brown, inflected with basil and possessed of a magically springy texture, served with a cucumber salad laced with crushed peanut, onion and entirely too much sugar. My advice? Lay off the sauce, or have a sugar-free version.

Then there are stuffed chicken wings, two huge wings stuffed with a mixture of pork and glass noodles (a clear noodle made from the mung bean), after having been pan-fried. The stuffing is wonderful, like a country pate, and the meat is moist and juicy. But again you get what looks like a red syrup in a side dish, that you are supposed to use as a dipping sauce. Maybe you can use it on their coconut ice cream instead.

What they will do for authenticity is blow off the roof of your mouth with prik kin nu, the incendiary Thai chilies that register somewhere between habaneros and hell in terms of Scoville units, the measure of hotness in chilies.

Dishes will be served mild unless you ask, but the server will give you the option of a scale from one to 10 for spiciness, and 10 will be, trust me, somewhere north of insane. If you aren't Thai, meanwhile, ask for condiments like prik nam pla, fish sauce laced with chilies that no red-blooded Thai would dream of omitting from the table, or green chilies, generally served hot, diced and deadly.

Salads are the most Thai part of Archi's menu. Larb is a typical dish from I-saan in the Thai northeast: chopped pork, chicken or beef, tossed with rice powder, green onions, chilies, cilantro and lime juice, eaten in the hollow of a raw cabbage leaf. Papaya salad, or som tam, is made from unripe green papayas, shredded and mixed with crushed peanuts, dried shrimp and green beans. In Thailand, the dish is often made with tiny little river crabs, but the crabs are not available in here.

Thais are big on curries, and they come in a rainbow of colors; red, green, yellow and panang, a coconut-based sauce, all of which rely on pastes of pounded spices. You choose an ingredient such as chicken, beef, shrimp, pork or tofu. The yellow curry is my favorite, laced with potato and onion, and terrific with beef. You might enjoy the green curry with tofu, as a vegetarian friend did.

Entrees can be pad kapow, pad prik king or ginger ginger ginger, to name three, all of which are Chinese-style stir-fries and nothing resembling the northeast Thai cuisine that you get in places such as Ocha or Lotus of Siam. (The first two mean basil, bell pepper, garlic and chili; and curry paste, green bean and lime leaf, respectively.) All of them are fine when eaten with the fragrant Thai rice, a variety that many gourmets consider the best in the world.

And be sure to order any of a number of excellent noodle and rice preparations. I'm a fan of pad kea mow, flat, white rice noodles stir-fried until crunchy, with egg, fresh basil, mixed vegetables, a touch of chili sauce and a choice of meats. I like the way chicken is mixed into these noodles, and the textural contrast it adds. Pork goes well with them, too.

If it's available, have sticky rice with coconut cream and slices of warm mango. Oddly, the dish isn't at all sweet or cloying, in spite of being a dessert. Some dishes, I guess, are just not to be trifled with, even when they are intended for us.

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