The Prague Post Online: Night & Day: Thai tastes in Malá Strana

July 25th, 2008

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Thai tastes in Malá Strana

A cool space and good value make Noi a welcome change
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By Dave Faries
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 23rd, 2008 issue

Noi

Újezd 19
Prague 1-Malá Strana
Tel. 257 311 411
Open daily 9 a.m.-midnight

Food **
Service ***
Atmosphere ***
Overall ***

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

Buddha holds the cards: Noi's hip dining room doubles as a serene work space.

FROM THE MENU

Chicken soup (tom kah kai) 70 Kč
Chicken satay 80 Kč
Pork spring rolls 80 Kč
Fried shrimp cakes 80 Kč
Red chicken curry 160 Kč
Green beef curry 210 Kč
Whole sea bass 290 Kč
Rice 40 Kč
Stella Artois 50 Kč

Over the past couple years I’ve met only two people who owned up to more than a one-off meal at Downtown Café — and none willing to openly champion the place. Already, however, people are talking about its replacement.

Noi bills itself as “the art of taste,” and the dining room, with its serene appointments, looks like something from an interiors catalog (apart from an air-conditioning duct or two). Servers are friendly in approach, relatively prompt and otherwise unobtrusive. The reputation of a restaurant, after all, is built on visual appeal and service as much as the food.

With two out of three working in its favor, Noi can afford a few culinary miscues.

To create pork spring rolls, the kitchen wraps suspiciously lifeless dough over ground meat supported by root vegetables and seasoning that amounts to less than its sum. In mathematical terms, it would be one of those unsolvable riddles: Add six or so flavors together and come up with zero. Only a nicely balanced dipping sauce tips the whole thing into the positive range.

The same dip is called in to rescue exceedingly savory fried shrimp patties (tod mun koong). Thai cooking succeeds when every ingredient contributes something to the finished product — something you perceive, even when it’s difficult to pinpoint the source. Thus galangal or cilantro may form an earthen backdrop that cumin picks up and ushers forward, although not to the front. Noi’s lime-chili sauce brings strong and contrasting elements into harmony, scaling back the sweet-tart sharpness without losing the essence of lime, allowing a peppery heat to step from the shadows but not run amok. In the three fried patties, however, the fresh, sweet taste of shrimp is lost to mustier flavors, giving each piece a faint — but nonetheless unfortunate — baitfish character.

However, these stumbles are not enough to throw the entire experience off track. For the most part, the kitchen’s errant turns seem quite minor indeed.

Tom kah kai (chicken soup) struggles desperately, with only partial success, to shake free of one-dimensional doldrums. Yet the meat is tender, the mushrooms cooked just right for a soup and the broth coats your palate. Strips of beef apparently throw a green curry dish out of whack by sinking the complexity of coconut milk spiked with chili. On the other hand, the vegetables are crisp and the broth pleasantly rich.

And that’s how it goes. For every mistake to nitpick, there’s a flash of something downright interesting to balance things out. Whole sea bass “filet” — meaning armed with a full panoply of bones — arrives in a sorry state: improperly cooked, wet and mushy. But the combination of citrus, herbs and spices builds an intense, complex flavor, at once tart, sweet, savory and searing. It’s so compelling that you wish for a spoon, so none of the sauce would go to waste.

Clearly the kitchen staffs some capable hands. Their chicken satay does not necessarily break from the usual cumin and coriander marinade. Rather, they freshen up the profile with a noticeable citrusy background. This creates a veneer so mild, it’s easy to miss. Once you pick it out, however, the thin tart-peppery character shows surprising resilience, hanging in to the end against an interesting peanut sauce, exposing itself as the husky sweetness of the sauce dissipates.

The coconut milk broth in their kang phed kai (chicken curry) presentation starts off almost as a nonentity, a mere texture both rich and full. The chef manages to mute its natural sweetness, so savory flavors pop up bit by bit. As this occurs, the expected coconut essence finally emerges on the edge of your palate. Heat rises at the same time, followed by an almost bitter taste. Only the last two flavors linger, and then you’re distracted by fresh carrot slices that reveal the earth, bittersweet beans and other ingredients.

This is the kind of thing that starts everybody talking.

After one visit, I thought of it as watered-down Thai. The second trip left me considering a classical “flawed hero” tale where moments of greatness are brought crashing to earth by little mistakes. By the third, Noi revealed itself as a fine value-for-the-money restaurant.

It’s not without problems — understanding the difference between jasmine rice and sticky rice, for instance. But it’s also capable of some welcome surprises.

Dave Faries can be reached at dfaries@praguepost.com

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