Neat, Sweet, but It Needs More Heat : Charming La Con Could Spice Up Its Familiar Thai

La Con is Thai for “performing arts.” It’s also an ultra-stylish new Thai restaurant.

Owner George Bushyakanist has taken a modest cafe space and turned it into a sort of artistic oeuvre . The walls are sponge-painted a rusty gold, adorned with unusual sculptures and long, flowing batiks depicting Thai dance. The tablecloths are a different shade of gold, offset by chairs upholstered in black silk. It’s calm in here, well suited to the Southeast Asian aesthetic. One wishes that the kitchen played to the same lofty aims.

Now, La Con performs well at times, despite showcasing a familiar variety act that many in its audience have undoubtedly seen before.

Outside Los Angeles proper, the Southland has few big-city Thai restaurants that feature food that is both fiery and authentic. (There are a few notable exceptions: Thai Nakorn in Stanton is one, and a little place up in Palmdale, Nopgow, recently knocked me on my ear.) La Con mostly sticks to the suburban Thai formula on which the majority of our Thai restaurants operate: sweet, fragrant, colorful and bland.

At least at La Con, the chefs are well trained, the food fresh, the presentation pretty and the overall package appealing. You won’t have an epiphany dining here, but you will probably come away reasonably happy.

If you aren’t averse to fried foods, a mixed appetizer plate called La Con’s Special can be an impressive start. It includes five of the menu’s six appetizers, leaving out only the light, fresh and pungent shrimp and chicken dumplings. The center of the plate is mee krob: kid-food extraordinaire. It’s nothing more than a tasty jumble of sweet, crisp noodles coated with a sticky, red tamarind sauce.

Underneath the mee krob are two items cooked on skewers, Thai sticks and satay. Thai sticks are essentially batter-fried shrimp and vegetables with a sweet chili sauce. The chicken satay, redolent of ginger and coriander, comes with an unctuous peanut sauce.

Spaced around the mee krob you’ll also find a couple of humdrum deep-fried spring rolls and the interesting krathong thong (tiny pastry cups holding curried minced chicken). It’s a most artistic display.

Thai cooks love to combine meats with raw vegetables like cabbage, onions and various salad greens, all of which grow in abundance in Southeast Asia. Larb kai is certainly the most distinctively Thai dish on this menu, though not prepared with nearly as much rice powder or peppers as the law allows. It’s ground chicken mixed with chiles, raw onions, spices and smashed rice, to be eaten with romaine lettuce.

Yum nuah is Thai beef salad. La Con’s version has a mouth-watering spicy lemon vinaigrette, and the kitchen complied beautifully with our request that it be prepared rather peppery. I’ve had better editions elsewhere, but that’s not the restaurant’s fault. The salad really should be made with charcoal-grilled beef, but so far, the restaurant has not been allowed, because of limited space, to install a charcoal grill. (That explains why you won’t find another Thai standby, kai yang --Thai barbecued chicken--on La Con’s menu. It’s our loss.)

My favorite Thai soup is the thick, creamy tom kha kai , made with coconut milk and boiled chicken. La Con’s version has plenty of mushrooms and lemon grass added to the broth, both fine additions. If you are looking for a spicier soup, try tom yum goong , a spicy and sour shrimp soup made with lime juice and more lemon grass. The dish can be incredibly peppery in Thailand. This one is a relative pussycat.

A few entrees attempt to be original, but none courts any real controversy.

Spicy eggplant and company is eggplant, tofu, baby bok choy and black mushrooms sauteed with basil and chili sitting atop a bed of al dente spinach noodles; it’s a lighthearted vegetarian entree. La Con fried rice has pineapple, cashew nuts and curry spices mixed in with the shrimp, chicken, egg and rice. Plad lad prig is a whole deep-fried fresh catfish, served with a bowl of wonderful spicy brown sauce, grainy and with a surprises like ginger, chile and red pepper in every bite.

There are a few disappointments too.

Mu ping is soggy pieces of pork tenderloin in a cloying, misbegotten sauce based on pineapple and Chardonnay. Ped ja-ar , the menu tells us, is flambeed, marinated roast duck in a sensational tangerine sauce. There is hardly any duck in this sugary dish, and what there is of it could be a new, exotic topping for ice cream. Finally the popular pad Thai, on the sweet side even in authentic Thai restaurants, has none of the redeeming heat or pungency it requires to interest the palate.

Since La Con is such a pretty, charming restaurant, it is easy to overlook the imperfections, and the exclusion of Thai favorites like tod mun fish cakes, fried beef with chile and garlic or interesting noodle dishes like ba-mee (egg noodles) and pad woon sen (clear noodles made from the mung bean).

Still, it’s hard to come away and not wonder how good things could have been, had La Con really been performing from the heart.

La Con is moderate to expensive. Appetizers are $4.25 to $10.95. Soups are $3.95 to $5.50. Salads are $4.25 to $7.95. Entrees $7.95 to $15.95.

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For the Record: Last week’s column on Bella Teresa incorrectly implied that owners Mike and Teresa Jordan were also the owners of Matteo’s, the previous restaurant at that site. Matteo’s belonged to Mike’s mother, Wanda Jordan.

* LA CON

* 1835 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa.

* Lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday.

* MasterCard and Visa.

* Times Line: 808-8463

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