Myriad small plates, terrific Thai tastes

One of the best Thai dishes I have tasted in years turned up in Bua Siam, a tiny restaurant in a North Hollywood strip mall. The heady fragrance that drifted up from the plate of fine rice noodles transported me to Thailand’s lush countryside.

I could have been eating in a rural market or from a noodle boat plying the klongs (canals).

Lemon grass, lime leaves, coconut milk and chiles played off each other brilliantly. It was not what I would expect from a dish called “Thai-style spaghetti with bay leaf stew.” The slightly bitter, delicately chewy leaves in the curry sauce are actually cassia (khi lek); the little pellets that look like fresh green peppercorns are cassia flowers.

This dish is so entrancing that I order it every time I go to Bua Siam, a place as sweet as its name, which means Siamese lotus. There are only seven tables, blond IKEA furniture. Yet the kitchen can turn out extraordinary food.

And much of it is at an unbelievably low price. Thai restaurants along this stretch of Sherman Way are competing with tapas-like menus. So in addition to a full Thai menu, Bua Siam has about 40 small dishes, including the noodles with bay leaf stew, for $2.50.

The small-plates conceit works. After all, the portions are the size they’d be at a street stall in Thailand: modest, but big enough to share. Three of us ate handsomely and had plenty to take home for $36, including drinks.

Owned by a family from Northern Thailand, Bua Siam offers an amazingly large variety of dishes for a small restaurant. Table cards in Thai (no English translation) list salads, noodles, rice dishes and northern specialties such as nam prik ong: finely chopped pork with chiles and tomatoes, accompanied by raw cabbage and cucumber.

A southern-style rice salad comes in a larger portion, for $4.95. Little piles of hot green chile, lemon grass, long beans, shredded lime leaf, cucumber and bean sprouts circle rice that’s covered with a mixture of finely shaved coconut, sesame seeds, lemon grass and dried fish. Toss it together, adding a dark sauce of sweet soy and a fermented fish sauce.

Thai spaghetti with coconut soup isn’t actually a soup. It’s rice noodles drenched with sweet coconut sauce, topped with fish cake and surrounded by sliced chiles, ginger strands, raw garlic, pineapple chunks and a hard-boiled egg. The effect is improved by adding a few drops of fish sauce.

I’ve had Thai hot and sour pork noodle soup so devoid of flavor I couldn’t eat it. Here, it’s strikingly good. A small tower of ground pork sits on flat rice noodles, along with silky fine pork balls, chopped peanuts, bean sprouts and a scattering of cilantro and green onion. The broth is lighter and sweeter than in the usual tom yam made with shrimp or chicken.

A Thai friend preferred the boat noodles in broth scented with five-spice. This soup is well balanced, but some might object to one of the ingredients -- blood, either beef or pork, depending on the choice of meat.

There’s nothing not to like about rice cakes with “shrimp” sauce. The cakes are made of cooked rice that is flattened, dried, then cut up and deep fried -- a Thai version of Rice Krispies squares. Bua Siam serves them with a bowl of luscious sweet sauce that tastes much more like pork than shrimp.

Sukiyaki might seem out of place here, but it’s a Thai dish too, not just Japanese. The seasonings are different, and one can order it dry or in soup. The soup version includes a little meat, rice noodles, beaten egg, fried garlic bits and leafy vegetables. A spicy, sweet red sauce made with fermented soy beans colors the broth. More of the sauce comes on the side so that Thais can make the soup as hot as they like. For the rest of us, it is fine as is.

Hainanese chicken rice -- steamed chicken on garlic rice cooked in chicken broth -- is as popular in Thailand, where it is called khao mun gai, as in Singapore. Bua Siam has the original and also a terrific variation: crunchy, golden fried chicken with a spicy sweet, red dip served on the same rice. This one is worth ordering in a full-size portion.

There are no desserts, so you might end the meal with an excellent Thai iced coffee. No matter. It’s great that the cooks are concentrating on the intriguing dishes that set this restaurant apart. *

Bua Siam

Location: 12924 Sherman Way, North Hollywood;

(818) 765-8395

Price: Small dishes, $2.50; regular menu dishes, $3.95 to $9.95; lunch specials, $4.95.

Best dishes: Thai-style spaghetti with bay leaf stew, hot and sour noodle soup with pork, rice cakes with “shrimp” sauce, southern Thai-style rice salad, fried chicken with garlic rice.

Details: Open for lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday through Wednesday; closed Thursday. No alcohol. Mall parking. MasterCard, Visa.