Another cuisine, another hit
Monis showcases exciting Thai cooking
By Tom Sietsema
Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012

Adozen or so people are huddled expectantly on the sidewalk outside 1511 17th St. NW. To passersby, we must look like the clusters one associates with Black Friday sales, the latest Almodóvar film or group therapy sessions. Precisely at 5:30 p.m., a light goes on outside the basement door, and a young woman pops her head out.

"Come on in!" she says with a smile to those waiting in the chill. She knows that we're not early-bird menu subscribers but that we're eager to score one of Little Serow's 28 unreservable stools. No one wastes any time filing into the pistachio-colored dining room with the rippled metal ceiling, although customers are briefly screened at a host stand before they are shown to a table. "Do you know about our menu?" someone always asks (and eager patrons always follow with a nod, as if it's not their first time at the foodie rodeo). "Our kitchen is small, and we can't offer substitutions," the host continues, scanning faces for any signs of hesitancy. There are nuts, we are told, and some serious heat. The dinner, priced at $45 and covering seven or more dishes, is also served family-style.

Ever been seated in the emergency row of an airplane and heard the flight attendant's spiel about your readiness to help in an emergency? This is the restaurant equivalent, only sweeter.

Here's hoping you love nuts, fire and sometimes eating with your fingers. Little Serow, named for a mountain goat found in Asia, is the brainchild of chef Johnny Monis and Anne Marler, creators of the superlative modern Greek restaurant, Komi, next door. Revealed in November, their latest contribution to the scene is set in a former Dunkin Donuts and takes diners on a tour of the Isan region of northeastern Thailand. The area features a style of cooking marked by abundant fresh herbs, chilies and sticky rice, and reflects a part of the globe that Monis and Marler hold dear: In August, they married in Chiang Mai, the largest city in northern Thailand.

The feast is launched with light-as-air pork rinds served with a funky dip fueled with dried shrimp paste, as well as a basket of fresh herbs, lettuces and vegetables. The greens are used as scoops, wraps and mops for the food to come. As is typical in Thailand, the place setting counts a fork and a spoon but no knife.

The menu typically lists seven Thai dishes, each of which is followed by three primary ingredients that don't begin to capture the complexity of the recipes (or the labor involved). Thus yaam makhua yao is trailed by "eggplant/cured egg/pickled garlic," and laap pla duk is followed by "catfish/shallots/chiles." The chopped eggplant, fleshy and electric, suggests meat; thinly sliced celery and fresh mint contribute crunch and brightness. The fish is minced with red and green chilies: a fluff of dynamite set off with crisp shallots.

Every dish (and every drink) is accompanied by a short story or helpful instruction. "Dancing shrimp," announces a server as she finds room on the increasingly crowded table for a saucer of shrimp splashed with fresh lime juice and sharpened with lemon grass, which imparts a jungle breeze. In Thailand, the seafood is dressed and eaten raw, she explains, while the shrimp are still wriggling. A plate of sliced house-made pork sausage is garnished with sprigs of anise-flavored Thai basil that a server tells us to use for bundling the spicy coins of meat. A short stack of pork ribs, marinated in fish sauce and whiskey imported from Thailand, then smoked and grilled, is so tender, I'm not sure how the meat stays on the bone. I do know this: The finishing accents of red chili paste, fresh dill and sugar leave a trail of pleasure on the palate.

Eating this food - the most exuberant Thai cooking I've encountered on the East Coast - is a (legal) zap to the brain's pleasure centers. Hot heads will definitely get more out of the trip than will delicate palates.

Like their boss, who uses a door connected to Komi to pop in and out of the young restaurant, the cooks at Little Serow have all traveled to, and absorbed the spirit of, the poorest but perhaps most luscious swath of Thailand.

Strains of Dolly Parton give way to bluegrass, which yields to folk tunes. Marler says the very American soundtrack at Little Serow was inspired by "the scrappy, proud resourcefulness" of the cooks she and her husband observed during their travels abroad. "We can't help but draw comparisons to a similar spirit we find in both Appalachia, where my mother is from, and the backwater town in Greece where Johnny's parents are from."

A fresh menu is posted online every Monday. Not every dish gets replaced weekly (thank goodness), but there's enough change from list to list to create regulars out of admirers. Monis's fish cakes, a recent inclusion, are a revelation. Fish cakes are typically dense and spongy, but these have centers that border on custard and emphasize galangal, a peppery member of the ginger family. Bolts of heat dart through the patties. Balancing the equation are cool and slippery house-made rice noodles and bean sprouts alongside.

Show a little curiosity about what's on your plate, and rewards might follow: a gratis splash of a sparkling gruner veltliner, maybe, or a plate of grilled chicken that the tiny kitchen can't make in crowd quantities. Both sweet and sour from its bath of fresh turmeric, white peppercorns and cilantro root, that chicken will have you dreaming about it long after you've extracted every speck of meat from bone. In true Monis, Marler & Company fashion, it's a bar-raiser.