Modern Alienation, Rock Video Style, Encounters <i> Mee Krob</i> at Thai House

At last, a Bohemian Thai restaurant, full of the glamour/squalor of youth and art. At Thai House the front door is sheathed in steel, as if this were not a restaurant but an apartment in a high-crime neighborhood. Inside, the walls are either black or pointedly half-painted. A warehouse ceiling looms cavernously overhead, and the floor is evidently colored by corrosive liquids spilled on it in its previous warehouse days.

Under each of the lamps that hang from the ceiling is a welded metal tray of uncertain function, and there’s metal, sculpture-like stuff lying around, mostly in the proper bleak style. However, in the middle of everything, a boxy structure with a pyramidal copper roof houses a handsome Oriental brass vase, the only bright color within these walls.

Thai House can be busy, the echoey bar crawling with young people dressed in dark clothes who looked as if they might have been there for the sound track. The music, by the way, sounds like a radio station, only it probably isn’t, since you might hear “Lean on Me” (the new version) four times in one hour.

Sometimes, though, it’s nearly empty. Once there was only one other party in the whole place, a couple who had come down to thrash out their relationship in legalistic detail--in low voices, fortunately. Empty or full, it was pretty much the same. At Thai House, alienation and the whole ambience of modernity meet jolly old mee krob .

It is a jolly mee krob at that, a bit plain but not too sweet or sticky, and the noodles are still crisp. The rest of the menu is in the same line, the old Thai specialties pretty nicely done. The restaurant has your deep-fried fish cake mixed with green beans. It has your angel wings, a very decent version, with the good, crisp chicken wings and a savory pork, chicken and black mushroom filling.

Some things that may not sound too exciting actually work quite well. The vegetable soup is very light and fresh tasting, a neutral broth with snow peas, Chinese cabbage, mushrooms and green onions. The vegetables are thrown into the broth just before serving--they are just losing their color as the soup is set on the table.

The panang is also extremely aromatic, redolent of the concentrated coconut milk and curry sauce in which the beef is cooked. There are several dishes with the broad and rather thick noodles usually seen in lard nah. For instance, kai kuwa : fried broad noodles mixed with chicken, squid and peanuts instead of the lard nah business of meats and brown gravy.

The list of specialties has a slight Cantonese coloring, but it also includes a duck marinated in honey, black pepper, garlic and curry powder. This doesn’t taste quite as exotic as the ingredients might sound, but the dipping sauce is exotic, honey-like and loud with ginger flavor.

The menu stars the spicy dishes, of course, but they are rarely very hot by L.A. standards. One needlessly starred dish is naked shrimp, which tastes rather naked indeed--the mint and lemon grass leave as little impression on them as the red pepper. Another is the yellow curry, where chicken and potatoes come in a curry sauce of a rather Indian cast, heavy on the turmeric, cardamom and cumin.

OK, the seafood combination is sort of hot. It’s a large plateful of scallops, shrimp, squid and fish mixed with mint and lemon grass in a thin, astringent sauce where you can definitely taste some hot pepper. Basically, though, Thai House is the classic Thai restaurant with pad thai and all its playmates.

And rather restrained versions of those--the garlic and pepper chicken, like many another, is a little on the sweet side and only faintly garlicky. The barbecued ribs are marinated in a homemade sauce, says the menu, but the effect is essentially that of many a Cantonese barbecued rib, only a little more chewy. There’s a dipping sauce for this one that definitely is hot, the sort that is nothing but a light orange puree of red peppers.

There’s only one dessert: coconut-banana ice cream topped with cashews. It’s pretty good, actually, though I don’t remember being warned about those bananas. In the dim light I worried a little about what the yellow lumps might be until I recognized the flavor.

So there you are. Set up a fog machine in Thai House and it would look like the set for a rock video. It’s the Thai restaurant for those times when you feel the need to eat spicy and sour shrimp soup in an atmosphere of adventure and despair.

Recommended dishes: vegetable soup, $2.75; kai kuwa, $6.95; panang, $6.50; banana-coconut ice cream, $2.50.

Thai House, 8657 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 274-5492. Open for lunch from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Saturday; open for dinner from 5 to 10:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 5 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Beer and wine. Street parking. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $27 to $44.