By Tom Sietsema
Washington Post Magazine
Sunday, January 18, 2004
Rice is not your father's Thai restaurant. It may not even be the kind of Thai restaurant that you are most accustomed to, given the dozens of glossy look-alikes that fleck the Washington landscape like so many grains of sticky rice. With rare exceptions -- Thai Square in Arlington, for example, or Sakoontra in Fairfax -- the menus at too many of them are largely interchangeable, right down to the tame flames of the dishes billed as "spicy."
You heard it here first: The leaders of the Thai pack just got some much-needed company. And it's just a short walk from the Studio Theatre in Logan Circle.
Finding Rice, the newcomer in question, can be tricky. There are no obvious signs announcing its presence, just a small, brushed-nickel plate with carved letters too small to read from a passing car. The dining room, visible through the single front window, is equally subdued. There are zero distractions on the alternating red brick and pale green walls, and furnishings are kept to the bare minimum, just some dark teak tables and chairs and a small fountain to one side. The music of choice -- classical guitar on most of my visits -- matches the restaurant's Zenlike mood.
Rice looks as if someone who knows something about design put it together, and that someone turns out to be Somsak Pollert. The owner of the nearby home furnishings store Simply Home, the newly minted restaurateur has created a cocoon of comfort at Rice, both visual and otherwise. The lighting is soft and flattering; the birch floors are buffed to a warm shine. Watching over the kitchen, meanwhile, is his friend of many years, co-owner Phannarai Promprasert, who counts cooking time at Tara Thai in Rockville and Busara in Washington.
The menu is divided into three sections, plus lunch specials. One column brings together a dozen specialties of the house, dishes that Pollert says he cooks at his home or has spotted at trendy restaurants in his native Thailand. A second column lists "authentic" dishes, which would be familiar to anyone who eats in American Thai restaurants. The third section -- "healthy green" -- emphasizes recipes with vegetables. The format is a little confusing the first time out, but the good thing is, you're free to compose a lunch or dinner mixing dishes from the different sections. So a meal could start with a beef salad tossed with lime juice, and continue with a certainly less traditional spaghetti with anchovies.
Pasta? In a Thai restaurant? Grab the opportunity at Rice. One of several intriguing specialties from the first page, that spaghetti delivers a strangely satisfying weave of green peppercorns, bits of bacon, halved cherry tomatoes and purple basil along with the anchovies. It sounds like a kitchen sink, and it is, but I'm talking gold-plated rather than stainless steel here. Another of Rice's innovations is an appetizer of herb-veined pork sausage, sliced into rounds and arranged on a plate with little piles of peanuts, minced ginger, diced red onion and cool squares of lettuce; the greens are used to bundle together the sausage and the garnishes for a bite-size Thai-style burrito. Nice and light, these bright packets sparkle in the mouth. "Crab dip" is the exact opposite of the creamy spread the term suggests: The shredded seafood, sweet and rich, shows up on a fiery base of red chilies, lime juice, garlic and fish sauce that is so hot, beads of sweat might form on your brow. Yet another treat in this collection is an entree of tender, prettily scored squid in a light wash of soy and oyster sauces emboldened with garlic. Crisp-cooked broccoli and carrots add color to the otherwise monochromatic picture.
A few land mines lie hidden in the field of "authentic" dishes, however. A bowl of shrimp and lemon grass soup is best for the tang of its broth; the shrimp itself is dull and overcooked. The chicken satay is dry. But chicken with cashews is abundant with slivers of chicken and crunchy nuts, a duo bridged with the gentle heat of peppers.
Rice welcomes vegetarians with open arms. The meatless pad thai is a goodie bag of cabbage, carrot, zucchini and pickled radish tossed with noodles and nestled in a thin omelet shaped like a sunburst; if you think all pad thai tastes the same, Rice's version will change your mind. Spring rolls the size of pencils are filled with mashed taro root and served with two dips, one red with chilies, the other green and vibrant with cilantro, ginger and sesame oil. There's a lovely fruit salad, too, gathering grapes, pineapple, apple and mango ignited with an electric dressing of garlic and chilies. Generous amounts of sauteed ginger lift an entree of stir-fried broccoli, carrots and bean curd to a higher realm, as do the tiny eggplants in a fine green curry of vegetables and tofu. At Rice, unlike too many restaurants, vegetarians aren't made to fly second-class.
No matter which category the entrees are picked from, each is presented with a little mound of sticky rice -- yellow with curry, green from pandan leaves or naturally dark -- enriched with coconut milk. The pleasantly chewy starch is a welcome break from the steamed white rice scooped up by most Thai kitchens. (Better than any liquid, the grain also helps dilute the fiery qualities of the spicier dishes.) Too bad there's not much more than Thai beer to recommend with this cooking; the wine choices are strictly of the "I remember drinking this in college" variety. Desserts are something of an afterthought, too. Coconut pie drizzled with chocolate sauce tastes like something Mary Ann might have whipped up on "Gilligan's Island" -- it's missing a creamy filling, for starters -- and deep-fried tea ice cream comes off like a wayward profiterole. A diner's best bet is to go native, with slices of mango with sticky rice.
With entrees averaging $13, Rice is a bit more expensive than your typical Thai haunt. But I'm content to shell out a few more bucks for food that shows imagination and a dining room that doesn't repeat the look of its competitors. Rice is charting a course all its own, and it's a welcome one.
