Let's start with an admission: I have a Thai restaurant prejudice. It’s a reflex, a Manichean outlook that instantly assigns a place to one of two categories.The first serves diners who crave the bright, herby flavors and searing spice the best Thai food offers. The other caters to what I’ll call, lacking a better term, the Euro-American preference: more atmosphere in the dining room, less oil and heat in the food. Atmosphere is the operative word here, or décor. The harder a Thai restaurant tries to look good, my reflex tells me, the more likely it is to serve uninspired food.
For the sake of objectivity, I suppressed this typecasting instinct on walking into Bodhi Tree, the third and latest venture of partners Pariya Chayasakulviwat and Pornthep Jarumpornsakul. The pair also owns EM Thai Kitchen in Carroll Gardens and AM Thai Chili Basil in Kensington. Bodhi Tree, in the East Village, is their first try at Manhattan, and they’ve supplied the place with a real Downtown sheen.The walls are a pretty blend of sea green and rust, a serene offset to the hardwood floors and furnishings. Behind the banquet that runs the length of the narrow, rectangular space are lacquered wooden stands displaying brightly colored fans. And beyond the bar, above which hang a row of glass fixtures, an elaborate panel faces a slender Buddha suspended from the ceiling.The place is sleek but, impressively, not overly cold.That said, sleek is a word I’ve never ap plied to a Thai restaurant I like.
The music didn’t help. It was loud and insistent, consisting of mostly cheesy dance beats. A few tables away sat a large group of young, pretty people, dudes in striped dress shirts and their well-made-up girlfriends, casually shouting conversations. I suspect they didn’t like the soundtrack either but also that they were comfortable in places where bad music plays at earsplitting volume.
I had to wonder if this was the clientele all those contempo-Asian design details were meant for, and if so, what it would mean for the food. So what about the food? Well, the menu covers a lot of ground, including both familiar dishes and some that were intriguingly uncommon. Pumpkin, for example, makes a rare appearance, one of many instances where the menu looks beyond typical Thai restaurant offerings.
Bodhi Tree also offers mock duck as a meat option in all of its noodle and rice dishes.The many reasonably priced small plates explored Thai cuisine’s pan-Asian reach.The curry puffs ($5), fried and stuffed with a curried potato, reminded us all of samosas. But the shells were soft and the filling bland, so that in taste and texture the puffs were more like little chicken potpies. Feeling very Chinese, a duck roll ($4) was mostly right, with its soft pancake and sweet and tangy hoisin providing the right taste and texture, but the duck itself was a little dry. Taro wontons ($4), another plate that would’ve felt at home on a Chinese menu, were better. Their papery skins were thin and fried to just the right crisp, while the taro inside was sweet, rich and toothsome. We also liked the shrimp dumplings ($5), which were served with a rich, buttery pumpkin puree. Moo yang, a Bangkok specialty, was solid if not inspiring, its char flavor present but a little flat. Best among the small plates were the pork balls ($5), delicious little garlicky spheres accompanied by an eggplant basil relish that was, like Thai food at its best, both savory and alive with the bright taste of fresh herbs.
The larger plates were just as inconsistent.The pad kee mao (aka drunken noodles; $9) was sweet and fragrant, but not spicy enough.We ordered ours with mock duck, which was full of flavor and had a nice firm texture. But while that standard passed muster, another, the toothless Massaman curry ($10), fell flat. Ordering from the Thai specialties menu proved more rewarding.
The gai yang, a smoked half chicken ($12) combined heady herb flavor with a deep smokiness, managing to be earthy and aromatic as well as improbably moist. It was served with a pungent papaya salad that didn’t spare the fish sauce.
Also on the plate was a little cup of cloyingly sweet dipping sauce.Why sully a well-executed dish with such a hapless condiment? Maybe the restaurateurs think that’s what customers want. It’s a telling detail, one that points to Bodhi Tree’s frustrating inconsistency. Even a near-perfect dish still, in a small way, bowed down to bad taste. I ignored it and let the smoky, savory chicken speak for itself.
> Bodhi Tree
58 Third Ave. (betw. E. 10th & E. 11th Sts.), 212-677-5199
