Rising Star in Restaurant Firmament

Star 88, 1901 West 8th St . , Los Angeles. (213) 413-5510. Open for lunch Monday through Friday, for dinner Monday through Saturday. Full bar. Parking in lot. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, (food only), $20-35.

If eating where the natives eat is any criterion for authenticity, then the brilliant new Star 88 must surely be the most authentic Thai restaurant in Los Angeles. That’s because owner Suchati Vilaidaraga is the owner of a tour company which specializes in bringing groups of Thais on junkets to Los Angeles. And it seems that Tony, as he is called, realizing that there were no Thai restaurants of quality adjacent to downtown Los Angeles, opened this restaurant largely so he could feed his charges. In the process he has created one of the best Thai restaurants in the city.

If the design has a familiar ring it is no accident. The vast, rose colored dining room resembles an Asian version of Cardini in the downtown Hilton, with stunning marble flooring, post-modern block ceilings, and the illusion of multiplicity where there is none. That’s because Jun Kwok, a Korean who renovated the Hilton and designed the New Seoul Hotel in Koreatown, also did the work here. Here Kwok has used rattan nearly everywhere; in the low, padded chairs, in the screens which make a platformed space change magically into a private room, and all around the large, tropical bar. This is Asia, Back to the Future style. Expect a trend.

The kitchen makes food for the Thai palate. Since Bangkok Thais are used to mild food, while northeast and southern Thais favor more blistering fare, the waitresses ask how hot you want your food. If you answer hot, chances are they will take it under advisement, and then adjust because you are a Westerner. However, should you answer “as hot as you are making it for the Thais over there,” the waitresses will give you a couple of chances to back off. Then count on a firestorm.

Appetizers are the only chance to get really mild dishes here. Gah-thonh-thong , those little golden cups of flaky pastry filled with a mixture of minced chicken, shrimp, and corn, go well with beer, as does beef jerky (Thai style), a chewier, more full- flavored version of its Western counterpart. Not to be missed by any means is tod mun , Thai fish cakes with a wonderfully spongy texture. At Star 88 they are big, moist, and complex with cilantro and mint. This may be the restaurant’s best dish.

Inside the menu’s outer cover, there is a 14-dish Thai menu. Thanks to a patient waitress who stood there and translated them one by one, I was able to taste a few of these dishes. Surprisingly, I found they they were almost milder than dishes from the English menu. Except for the krung nai voi , or organ soup (which many might not want to choose), it is a mystery to me why these dishes are not translated. Some of them struck me as distinctly international, rather than Thai.

Consider ka naa mui gaw , Chinese broccoli with crispy pork that tasted distinctly Chinese. Fabulous. Or how about hoi meng pu , green lipped mussel hot pot, with a crushed garlic dipping sauce. French influence, perhaps? And then there is kai jou mu sap , omelet with ground pork, that looked and tasted like a dish I ate in central Europe.

But if you want to mess with the Thai menu, then be warned of an equally unpredictable rise in temperature. Beg pat ki mau , minced duck with mint leaf, sneaks up on you and then lowers the boom. Goong pad nam prik pao , shrimps in red curry paste, are cute little killers. And lastly, notice that nuah ngam dok , Thai beef salad, also appears on the English menu. The difference is about one hundred degrees, centigrade.

If you are looking for your favorite Thai dishes, don’t worry, you will find them. We started with a silver caldron of tom ka , the coconut milk based soup with straw mushroom, galingale, lemon grass, and lots of chili and lime. We asked for it hot, and the fire warming the soup underneath looked refreshing by comparison. Phad Thai , flat rice noodle stir fried with shrimp and bean sprout, and a rather greasy lard-na , the same noodle in gravy with meats and vegetables, are in attendance, and so is kang dang , red curry, and kang keaw , green curry, which can be ordered with a choice of meats.

I would avoid the rather precious looking dishes with names like southern spicy, cashew delight, star delight, and the like. They are strictly for tourists.

Recommended dishes, tod mun, $4.95, tom yum, $5.95, beef salad, $4.50, hoi meng pu, $8.95, goong pahd na prao, $5.95, homemade coconut ice cream, $2.