Moonstruck

Assorted Asian flavors hum at Moon Krapugthong's new small-plater.

by Trey Popp

Michael T. Regan SAUSAGE OF THE GODS: MangoMoon's homemade sausage, pictured here alongside oysters on the half-shell, is the best our critic has ever eaten — anywhere.

Being a Thai restaurateur in America is like being a programming executive at Fox. You have two main options: Strip away the chilies and fish sauce and pungency that might scare away the undiscerning masses (i.e. Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?) or stay true to the ingredients and acquired tastes that spur cultish adoration among the Chowhound cognoscenti (Arrested Development-style). As for which is the road more traveled, suffice it to observe that the inimitable Bluth family was ultimately evicted from its time slot to make way for Skating with Celebrities.

That unfortunate calculus is no doubt clear to Moon Krapugthong, who already had an M.B.A. when she opened Chabaa Thai in Manayunk in 2005. A reputation for winning renditions of the usual favorites has helped that BYOB win a loyal following. With MangoMoon, which kicked off in December just a couple of blocks away, Krapugthong tweaks the formula a little bit.

Although the countless copper nails hammered into the wall by the entrance cohere into a poem rendered in Thai script, MangoMoon doesn't actually call itself a Thai restaurant. It opts for "Asian small plates and sake bar" instead. You might want to take that designation with a splash of nam pla. The menu may spurn standards like pad Thai and tom yum soup, but its center of gravity is distinctly Siamese. There's an occasional outlier — the translucent, velvety broth of an excellent sea cucumber soup spotted with water-lily flowers was more Chinese than Thai — but the pan-Asian label mainly seems like a gambit to get customers to discard the preconceptions (and unrequited desires) they're apt to carry into straight-ahead Thai spots.

If so, it worked on me. I've been smitten with real, unadulterated Thai food for 10 years, but MangoMoon made it surprisingly easy to abandon that fixation for a spell. It helps that the walls aren't lined with the usual hodgepodge of icons and tourist-market schlock. Even with a spinnaker's worth of colorful fabric festooned from the ceiling, the soaring two-level interior has a restrained, sophisticated feel. Upstairs, the copper-topped, chest-height banquet table next to the bar is one of the most satisfying dining perches in town.

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Krapugthong's menu will tug at the heartstrings of anyone nostalgic for the days when coffee bars- actually sold something called a small. It begins with "tiny" plates and ends at "medium" ones, which approximate an entrée portion without the sides. The tapas in between those two categories are big enough for everyone in a foursome to get a bite or two. Standouts include lettuce leaves folded around dried shrimp, toasted coconut, peanuts, shallot, ginger and lime (although these would benefit from a stronger herbal element); shrimp and water chestnut dumplings, whose eggy, sesame-tinged interiors are clothed in particularly delicate wrappers; and a northern-Thai-style sausage called sai auh (which is sometimes transliterated as sai oua).

But there's a problem with that last sentence. It makes it sound like that's the trio of dishes I'd order next time around, when what I'd really do is book the sausage for all three slots. Have kaffir lime leaves ever sung so clear a note from within a tube of pork? Have lemongrass and galangal ever joined so seamlessly in harmonic complement? If so, I want to know about it. This homemade beauty at MangoMoon — charred at the edges, yet impeccably moist inside — was the best sausage I have ever eaten. Of any kind. Even versions I recall from Thailand (where a higher dose of bird's eye chilies often drowns out the rest of the chorus) fail to outclass this specimen in Manayunk. If MangoMoon sold these in bulk for takeaway, I'd buy a chest freezer and a pickup truck.

Nothing else reached those weather-balloon heights, but the kitchen hit more often than it missed. Grilled pork neck came perfectly seared and uncommonly juicy, with a dipping sauce whose hint of chili was as welcome as it was rare in other dishes. Less successful was a salad built around salmon tempura, which needed a more assertive dressing to bring the crispy fish and mango shoestrings together. Oysters on the half-shell, which looked like they'd been knocked around a bit in transit, also would have benefitted from a chili-lime sauce with enough heat to stand up to the citrus.

Dessert was another weakness. I liked the delicate texture of a mung bean custard, but the flavor could have been more assertive. And the mango on the classic coconut-doused sticky rice wasn't quite ripe.

Good thing the beverage department more than makes up for it. How refreshing it is to find the Thai-standard bottles of Singha and Beer Chang flanked by the likes of Dogfish Head and Duvel. MangoMoon also stocks enough sake to live up to its preferred appellation, and mixes pretty good cocktails, too. Our waiter was a little fuzzy on the spirit side of menu, but that just goes to show how rare it is to find a well-provisioned bar in a place that steams rice in lotus leaves. Otherwise, the service was knowledgeable and candid, if somewhat stiff.

All in all, there's more than enough culinary skill at MangoMoon to merit a visit. The flavors and textures here are as varied as at any other tapas spot in town and represent a pretty good value. Dinner with drinks should come in below $80 for two, which doesn't happen too often on the small-plates circuit. I wish the kitchen felt freer with the chilies — an even slightly spicier edge might have elevated several dishes to the next level — but then, I wish I could still watch Gob preside over the Bluth Banana Stand from his Segway on network TV.

And given the challenges of the marketplace, let there be no doubt: Krapugthong has done a hell of a lot better than the genius who brought us toe loops from Todd Bridges.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

MangoMoon | 4161 Main St., Manayunk, 215-487-1230, mymangomoon.com

Hours: Sun.-Mon., 5-9 p.m., late-night menu 9-11 p.m., bar till mid; Tue.-Thu., 5-10 p.m., late-night menu 10 p.m.-mid, bar till 1 a.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5-11 p.m., late-night menu 11 p.m.-1 a.m.; bar till 2 a.m.

Tiny dishes, $3; Small dishes, $5-$9; Big dishes, $12-$25| Wheelchair accessible