Rangthong Runs Hot and Cold On Suburban Thai

Thai restaurants exploded onto the Southern California scene during the ‘80s, asserting themselves as perhaps our favorite places to eat Asian food. Why do you suppose that is?

Observe Rangthong Thai Cuisine in Seal Beach: At heart it is a quiet, suburban restaurant, not the sort of place where a purist seeking genuine rustic Thai cuisine would go. The kitchen is definitely geared to its neighborhood’s tastes, but dig deeper--you’ll find that, as in most of our Thai restaurants, very little is actually compromised.

Count on it. Mint, garlic, lemon grass and chilies are used with discretion here, but the essential Thai flavor is never in question. No wonder Thai restaurants have become so popular. A number of our suburban Chinese and Japanese restaurants, which serve food that barely passes for Asian, could take a lesson.

The door of Rangthong Thai Cuisine is guarded by a 4-foot-high elephant statue carved out of a solid block of ironwood, regally situated under a portrait of Thailand’s beloved King Bhumiphol. The inner sanctum here, where meals are taken, is all suburban bliss--Thai style, of course.

The walls, for starters, make quite an impression, their soft coffee hue embellished by a variety of museum-quality crafts. Huge carved teak sculptures, giant maroon fans and exotic musical instruments hang languidly on them, looking almost mystical in the soft, diffuse light.

The tables present an elegant appearance: maroon and white tablecloths, reedy brass vases filled with orchids. You sit on carved, high-backed teak chairs and eat with bronze utensils: wide-mouthed spoons for eating rice, long-toothed forks for spearing meats. But despite the travelogue appointments, you know you are in suburbia. The background grocery store music makes sure of that.

If you are like most people at a Thai restaurant, your first instinct will be to tackle appetizers. Proceed with caution. This is where the kitchen is at its most complacent.

For example, Rangthong’s spring rolls (po pia ) are flawed enough to put you off an entire meal here. The Thai version of this Pan-East Asian favorite can be delightful: dense, meaty egg rolls stuffed with ground pork, vermicelli noodles and minced vegetables. Not these. These taste like frozen and offer no flavor but a faint memory of garlic. Stuffed chicken wings, a Thai cooking touchstone, can be equally flavorless here. The ones I tasted, stuffed with a pork and chicken forcemeat, came up over-fried, nearly burnt.

Now you have weathered the storm. Mee krob and naked shrimp are two appetizers to get excited about: the one being crisp, wispy fried noodles tangled together in a sweet spicy tomato sauce and the other an oblong dish of whole shrimp sauteed with chili paste, lemon grass and hot peppers.

This food is a bit on the sweet side, though, and the cooks aren’t about to turn up the heat just for you. (“We’re afraid you won’t like it,” as the manager is apt to say with a shrug).

If you do like it hot, the best option is to season your dishes yourself. Ask any of the beautifully costumed waitresses for their special tray of chili sauces, generally reserved for Thai guests. Be warned, though: These tiny dishes of liquid fire mean business. One evening the selection included tiny red chili flakes that would take rust off a fender. Chances are a waitress will watch over you when you spoon it on.

That said, there are a host of good dishes to sample. If you are lucky enough to find “lucky spicy salad” on the specials board, grab it. This is actually larb, a fiery ground meat preparation served in a giant cabbage leaf. Rangthong makes two kinds, chicken or beef. Go for the grainy, pungent ground beef, deceptively hot--it’s probably the single best dish served here.

Soups are also on the sweet side, but two stand out. Tom ka kai, the classic chicken coconut soup, is generally served mild, even in Thailand. It’s mainly chunks of chicken and whole straw mushrooms in a creamy broth made from coconut milk. Tom yum goong packs more of a punch. This spicy shrimp broth is the color of glowing embers, but plenty of sugar ensures that the effect doesn’t extend to your mouth. It’s sharp, all right, but the sharpness you taste is just lemon juice.

The usual array of multihued curries--green, red and yellow--reign here, prepared with a choice of meats. One not to miss is beef Panang, probably the heaviest Thai dish I can think of. Instead of the usual sliced rump, this dish employs chunked brisket, further weighed down by a curry braising liquid enriched with coconut milk. The beef comes bedded on a ring of leafy spinach.

Minty shrimp is another good one, sauteed with abundant green chili, whole garlic cloves and sprigs of fresh mint. Ask them to lighten up on the sugar with this one too, or the dish becomes annoyingly sweet.

You can get good barbecued chicken (when available on special) and a delightful, if oily, dish of crab claws in curry-spiced onion sauce. On the side, you’ll want one of those noodle or rice dishes that any Thai restaurant owner will tell you are favorites with Western guests.

Pat Thai is the noodle dish of choice. It’s a tangle of clear rice noodles, stir-fried with shrimp, egg, ground pork and bean sprouts. The restaurant makes a mean spicy fried rice, too, one where they don’t spare the green chili one bit. Some dishes, it would seem, resist compromise better than others.

Rangthong Thai Cuisine is inexpensively to moderately priced. Appetizers are $4.95 to $6.95. Soups and salads are $3.25 to $6.25. Main dishes are $6.50 to $12.95.

* RANGTHONG THAI CUISINE

* 600 Pacific Coast Highway, Seal Beach.

* (310) 596-1686.

* Open Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 3 to 9:30 p.m.

* All major cards accepted.