Lots of Spicy Options at Spices Thai Cafe

Is North County ready for a Thai restaurant with an attitude?

It may be, particularly because the spices at Spices Thai Cafe in North City West are used with conviction rather than abandon, and because the attitude extends only to a ban on beef and pork (even this is relaxed to allow for a pair of rib preparations).

This semi-vegetarian approach, if somewhat limiting, still allows plenty of options, and those choices are extended by the mix-and-match entrees that pair a range of typical Thai preparations with the flesh (chicken, roast duck) or seafood (shrimp, squid, scallops, fish) of choice. Thus you can have any of these critters cooked mildly or hotly with curry pastes, or cashews and dried chilies, or with mixed vegetables, or sweet and sour, or . . . just about any (Thai) way you want it, including deliciously fried with a blend of chilies, fresh mint leaves and potent garlic sauce.

The god who oversees restaurant design ruled, for some reason, that Thai restaurants in the United States should be uniformly handsome, and this one conforms to that decree. Easy on the eyes, it also is easy on the palate, especially in the realm of starters. Two diners easily could compose a dinner of several appetizers--and perhaps a soup--and depart feeling entirely satisfied.

The ideology that rules some vegetarian approaches can be annoying, at the very least, but Spices merely offers meatless dishes as an alternative and does them well enough to make them attractive. On the appetizer list, the leader would be the “veggie” spring rolls stuffed with sticks of firm tofu, crisp lettuce, vibrantly fresh mint leaves and tender rice noodles. The peanut and sweet, syrupy sauces served with them only add to the pleasure. Meatless starter options extend to a Thai-style tempura of vegetables with a dip of plum sauce and crushed peanuts.

Savory notes enter the appetizer list with such dishes as the steamed Thai dumplings--based on the Chinese model and stuffed with a mild mix of minced crab, shrimp and chicken--and the steamed mussels, cooked in a feisty broth that includes lemon grass, basil, chilies and garlic.

Quite the best in the category, however, is the larb kai , a dish more typically made with beef in this country, but here prepared with chicken; the Thai word for chicken is, in fact, kai , and you will see it repeated regularly across Spices’ broad menu. This cold dish represents Thai cuisine at its best and combines a mince of fowl with shredded red onion, lime juice, much fresh mint, rice powder and crushed red chilies.

Savory almost to the limits of the term, the larb kai also is hot, but no hotter than you wish, since servers allow you to order it spiced on a scale of 1 to 10. Unless you know that you have no tolerance or great fondness for heat, about 3 to 5 seems in the right range. This holds true for the other dishes for which the heat option exists.

Soups include the spicy coconut-based and hot-and-sour preparations that make this less than a cooling interlude in a Thai meal, fleshed out variously with tofu, chicken or shrimp. The salads tend to be a bit easier on the palate, especially the yum yai , a rather sweet, easy-going arrangement of shrimp, hard boiled egg, chicken and lettuce decorated with colorful shreds of carrot. On the hotter side, the restaurant offers the Spices “veggie” salad of greens, tofu and pine nuts in a dressing of chilies and lime juice.

The main body of the menu offers mix-and-match combos of the selected fowl or seafood with various types of curry, vegetable mixes or noodles; the price depends on the flesh chosen, with chicken the cheapest at $6.95 and scallops or fish the most costly at $9.95. Simple offerings include tosses with fresh basil or mint; the curries run red, green, sweet with pineapple or lushly creamy in the Panang version, and the noodles can be volcanic or mild. The duck with eggplant (and chilies and basil) was quite pleasant, but noodles disappointed on both of two recent visits, particularly the curry noodles with chicken and vegetables in a sweet coconut-based sauce.

Thai curries can be grand, and if you wish to try one of the best, order the kai curry from the house specialties list; gorgeously tender chicken breasts repose in a sharp-sweet sauce softened by chunks of potato and carrot. Other specialties include the choo - chee curry duck; the Princess duck with honey sauce and sliced ginger; the sizzling lemon grass chicken; the “golden legs” (a euphemism for frogs’ legs), and the Pattaya pineapple stuffed with chicken, shrimp and cashews.

Desserts would be welcome after these spicy foods--were they more interesting. The coconut ice cream certainly is refreshing, but the fried banana consists of a great deal of soggy batter and the tiniest quantity of fruit.

Spices Thai Cafe

Piazza Carmel Shopping Center, 3810 Valley Centre Drive, Carmel Valley

Calls: 259-0889

Hours: Lunch and dinner daily

Cost: Entrees $6.95 to $14.95; dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, about $30 to $60