US Thai

I asked the waitress how hot Thai hot really was. She ducked out to talk to the cooks, and the cooks -- no doubt struggling with the inherent inadequacy of language for describing pain -- responded by simply providing two samples. "Careful," the waitress said as she set the bowls down.

In one was a simple red-pepper sauce. Not too bad, I thought. It was the kind of thing I mix in with my pho in Vietnamese restaurants or smear on lettuce wraps when I'm feeling frisky. In the other was a dry spice mix the color of crushed bricks and rage that should have come in a lead-lined bottle with multilingual warning labels and the phone numbers for various support groups dedicated to the slow rehabilitation of those who've tried just a little too much. A pinch of it was nice when added to a mild Penang curry with chicken, floated on the back of a bowl full of rich, sweet coconut milk, lime leaf and basil. It was hot, sure. Smoky, deeply earthy in tone, like blackstrap molasses and razor blades. A pinch plus a little more was like pouring high-proof whiskey on an open wound. Adding a little more than that quickly made me forget my hangover, because my sinuses were on fire. When you're crying gasoline, all the little aches and pains of daily life seem to just dry up and drift away.

Before I messed it all up, the curry was amazing. Kyaw has an incredible talent for those dishes intrinsic to Thai cooking. After trying his curry for the first time, I dreamed of it that night -- then went back a day later with a crowd and ordered five of the six offered on his menu, which we passed around a long table, grabbing bites and fighting over bowls. The silky-sweet and pinkish Penang was just as good the second time around, and the masaman was the best I've ever had -- rich with potato chunks and brightened up with slashes of yellow onion. The green curry -- sharp and colored like crème de menthe, with big hunks of soft zucchini, eggplant, sweet bamboo, bell pepper and, oddly, green beans -- wanted for seafood but was decent with chicken. The fish curry was huge, its flavor overwhelming the five catfish fillets piled into the bowl, but everything was brought into line by a singing top note of lemon and a cushion of strange, ethereal sweetness. And the jungle curry that followed was just freaky: a spicy, thin broth full of vegetables, tangled with sliced carrots and baby corn, with only a distant taste of curry somewhere in the background.

We ate dumplings that were heavy on the ginger, their bite tempered by steaming and by strong pork paste. The toomkah soup was like Campbell's cream of galangal -- warm and slightly thick, astringent with lemongrass, busy with soft and sharp herbal flavors that I've come to understand as the defining interplay of rough and honest Thai flavor: lemon giving way to cream, stepping aside for pepper, gutshot with galangal, bowing under the teasing sweetness of coconut. And even the simplest dish, a pineapple fried rice with chicken, came dusted with yellow curry powder and studded with cashews -- sweetened by one thing, dirtied up by another.

Nothing about Thai cuisine is simple; it only seems that way on a menu or a plate. That's why the cooks who don't understand it are so tempted toward fusion. In truth, though, Thai is a peasant cuisine gone mad with excess, street food from well over the rainbow that can only be brought back to earth by cooks like Kyaw, who have grown up with ginger on their tongues and coconut milk in their veins.

Step into US Thai on a busy afternoon, when both of the small dining rooms are full and the rail of the central open kitchen is crowded with dupes, and you can watch the blur of Kyaw and his cooks at work. With the grates popped on the ancient, fire-breathing hot-top and water cascading down the backsplash to keep the whole place from burning down, they never stop moving, never stop tinkering, never stop adding to a plate, a bowl, an oil-seasoned wok, until an entree hits the rail. A dozen combative spices, countless vegetables (done rough-chopped, julienned, slivered, batonnet-cut or shaved, each in their proper way), curry as a paste, curry as a powder, nine proteins, broths and bases held aside, rice in the steamers, noodles in the lowboys, fryers always in use, flames always leaping. It's an incredible dance, with results that are almost infallibly delicious, every flavor true.