Where satay is just the beginning

SUNSHINE Thai is as bright and cheerful as it sounds. The dining room is lined with windows and decked out like a garden. White balustrades call to mind a veranda and there’s a large outdoorsy mural, in front of which stand two charming Thai girls greeting customers. Sorry, fellows, they’re made of wood.

Sunshine is also one of the best Thai restaurants around, because it caters to a mostly Thai clientele. Many customers drop by after a visit to Wat Thai, North Hollywood’s Buddhist temple and Thai cultural center.

One day, all the specials were vegetarian because it was a Buddhist fast day. You could have vegetarian pad Thai, red curry, or pa-lo, a mild Chinese-style stew flavored with five-spice.

The specials are written in Thai, but someone will translate, and often they are the most interesting dishes. Pa-lo, for example, is often made with duck, but this time it was wrinkly rolled bean curd sheets, fried tofu, imitation meat made from gluten and shiitake mushrooms in the slightly sweet brown sauce. The variety of textures more than made up for the absence of duck.

Another special, on a non-fasting day, was the extreme of meatiness: four styles of pork on steamed rice. They were Thai-style Chinese sausage; crisp fried pork; pork hock braised with sweet soy sauce, cinnamon and star anise; and barbecued pork in a red sauce made with fermented soybeans, fish sauce and sugar.

A pretty noodle dish called mie gati swirled pink rice noodles in a sweet coconut curry sauce along with fresh tofu so tender it crumbled. Khanom jin nam prik pao, another version of noodles in sweet coconut curry, switched to wheat noodles, and the sauce included chopped peanuts, shredded carrot, hard-boiled egg and a hint of hot chile.

Tod mun pla, the finely ground fish cakes that come with a sweet cucumber relish, inspired another special -- the same sort of cakes made with ground pork. That same day, Sunshine also produced a fried fish maw salad. Fish maw may sound repulsive, but fried crisp, the puffed, porous tubes are as inoffensive as any crunchy snack. In this salad, they were combined with shrimp, squid, chicken, mango, nappa cabbage, cashews and a spicy sweet and sour sauce.

You won’t find these dishes every day, but that’s the pleasure of going to Sunshine -- there’s always something different to try. The regular menu contains a few dishes of special interest along with the usual Thai standards. There’s a fresh spring roll: a jumbo bundle of roast pork, Chinese sausage, egg, tofu, bean sprouts and cucumber in a soft wrapper topped with shrimp, cilantro and a delicate brown sauce. What might seem odd is the packet of American mustard lying on a pile of shredded cabbage. The Thai custom is to have a bite of the roll with a dab of mustard, then a bite of green onion. It’s an amazing, complex blend of flavors.

The dish called shallow sea presents shrimp, squid and crisp fried fish in a dark sauce fired with fresh and dried chiles and aromatic with lemon grass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves and basil. Dynamite rice, although very popular, is less interesting. The plain steamed rice stands beside a pool of mild, comparatively dull, thickened brown sauce mixed with chicken, shrimp, Chinese sausage, shiitake and vegetables.

Golden fish with mango salad is close kin to fish sticks. Large chunks of very tender, moist fish are coated with thick batter, dipped in panko bread crumbs and deep-fried. There are slivered mangoes and cashews in the sweet sauce on the side.

Green curry with chicken is so redolent of Thailand that you’ll think you’re there. The only non-Thai inclusion is red bell pepper, which joins Chinese and Thai eggplant, bamboo shoots, chiles, basil and kaffir lime leaves in the light, fragrant sauce.

The satay is charming -- there’s no better word for it. The sticks of chicken or pork arrive on a large platter with a little brazier on which to reheat them. In one bowl there’s sweet-sour cucumber relish, in the other a spicy, sweet peanut sauce that’s so good you’ll want to wipe up every drop. There are toast points on the plate for that very purpose.

Sunshine makes its own Thai tea and coffee, rather than using commercial mixes, and it has wonderful desserts, though they’re not on the menu. One day, the kitchen sent out a bowl of sweet, salty, warm coconut milk with little balls made of tapioca flour floating in it, along with lotus seeds, taro chunks, palm seeds and sliced coconut. Bananas in hot coconut milk came another day.

For the vegetarian fast, the kitchen produced three desserts, but all were gone by midday -- a sad blow for those of us who would happily give up meat, but not sweets.

*

Sunshine Thai Cuisine

Location: 13212 Sherman Way, North Hollywood, (818) 764-6989

Price: Appetizers, $3.95 to $8.50; entrees, $5.25 to $9; desserts, $2

Best dishes: Satay, green curry, fresh spring rolls, shallow sea, vegetarian pa-lo, four styles of pork, mie gati, fried fish maw salad, Thai tea and coffee