Another Thai Kitchen Cooking In Kirkland

----------------------------------------------------------------- Restaurant review

X 1/2 Thai Kitchen, 11701 124th Ave. N.E., Kirkland. ($) Lunch ($5.25 to $5.95) 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Dinner ($5 to $10.95) 3 to 10 p.m. nightly. Full bar. Lounge. Major credit cards. Nonsmoking area. Reservations: 821-5335. -----------------------------------------------------------------

All growth is change; not all change is progress.

In 1981 the first Thai Kitchen Restaurant opened in Bellevue. The place was popular and charming, although hardly spectacular. It prospered. There was little competition back then for the exotic ethnic dining dollar on the Eastside.

If it was novel, it sold. Some of that, in some locales, still pertains.

Two more Thai Kitchens came into being - spinoffs in Renton and Kirkland. Both eventually were sold by the original owner. The first knockoff alighted in a strip mall (next to a series of strip malls) near Totem Lake - which is itself a collection of strip malls named for a hidden body of water widely believed by 200,000 passing motorists to be apocryphal.

Thai Kitchen II is a roomy, pleasant, well-used spot that knows what motions a Thai restaurant in America needs to possess. It appears to be going through them - smoothly, almost automatically and with minimal sense of actual involvement.

The service and the food reflect a competency - bordering on complacency - that suggests the restaurant no longer needs to win over additional clientele.

Everything is good; nothing is really bad; little is special.

Thai cooking at its best is exemplified by a sense of artistry, color and bursts of flavor that make it one of the planet's most decorative, ornate and delightful cuisines. After a couple of visits to T.K. II, one is forced to conclude that little of that has recently happened here.

Disappointing soup

The greeting was polite, perfunctory, correct - and unenthusiastic.

The soup was clear, bland and except for a trace of lemon, could have passed for hot water augmented with three chops of scallion, two small cubes of chicken and two slices of uncooked cultivated mushroom.

An order of Chicken Satay (five skewers for $5.50) was lightly seasoned with a curry sauce, grilled and served, ungarnished, with a tiny cucumber salad and a rich, smooth peanut sauce.

The Phad Thai Lunch Special ($5.95) is supposed to include soup, rice and spring rolls. But the spring rolls never showed up.

Phad Thai, itself, has become everybody's favorite southeast Asian pet pasta. And, frankly, when it's properly prepared, I find it irresistible. "Properly" means well-seasoned rice noodles, scattered over with crushed peanuts, dotted through with cubes of tofu, bits of dried shrimp, scrambled egg and sided with fresh bean sprouts, scallions and, sometimes, a wedge of lime.

Dull version of Phad Thai

Checking off my plate: rice noodles nicely pink, a little tart, a little sweet and not hot at all. No tofu. No dried shrimp. No peanuts. A few bean sprouts (some of them browning at the seed-pod end). One bit of egg. No lime.

It was heaped alongside a mound of rice. No garnish. It was all quite edible. But rather lifeless. Let's face it. There are times when Thai food is presented with so much needless garnishing that it becomes almost silly (you get a little tired of frizzy sprays of orange and purple); but I've rarely, glumly considered a plate of Phad Thai spartan.

I decided to go back for dinner; maybe I'd find Totem Lake?

Better luck at dinner

The Larb beef salad starter ($5.25) was well-flavored with mint, onion and lime juice. A platter of Thai Kitchen Summer ($5.95) may have been rushing the season, but was welcome. A melange of celery, onions, green and yellow pepper and cashews had been stir-fried with chunks of chicken (you may order it with either meats or prawns) in "our own magnificent sauce," which was, if not quite magnificent, certainly very good.

One of the restaurant's regulars suggested ordering the seasonally available Mangos and Sweet Sticky Rice for dessert. The waiter said he'd check.

No mangos, he said when he returned.

A word about hotness. Some of the waitstaff at Thai Kitchen II ask how many "stars" of heat you'd prefer. Some do not. If you enjoy Thai food hot, request the stars. If you don't, you won't get any.

This is a restaurant with obvious skills and genuine experience. It would benefit from a heartfelt pep talk.

(Copyright, 1996, John Hinterberger. All rights reserved.) John Hinterberger, who writes the weekly restaurant review in Tempo and a Sunday food column in Pacific, visits restaurants anonymously and unannounced. He pays in full for all food, wines and services. Interviews of the restaurants' management and staff are done only after meals and services have been appraised. He does not accept invitations to evaluate restaurants.