Editorial Review

Anothai is an elegant restaurant whose owners’ personality and creativity are evident in the setting and the food.

Co-owner Lalida Silpacharn is obsessed with sunrise, it’s her favorite time of day. Her passion is infused into the spare, elegant restaurant, whose name means sunrise in Thai. Part of a restaurant pavilion at the western end of Broadlands Southern Walk Plaza, Anothai faces east. An open pergola extends across the front of the space. Dark wood tables are widely spaced along a back-to-back wooden banquette that dominates the room.

A narrow frieze of silver sunrises adorns a wall of backless benches arranged to form a series of open booths. The sunrise motif is repeated on the bar and even on the servers’ orange shirts, but it never overwhelms.

Co-owner Phumchai Kuchart, Silpacharn’s cousin, works the kitchen, and his food is as bright-tasting as the atmosphere. Silpacharn, who left a career in the telecom industry, wooed Kuchart from his 10-year-old restaurant, Ubon Kitchen, in Queens, N.Y., for her venture, which has been in the making for three years. It opened in March.

Kuchart’s menu includes traditional Thai dishes and his innovative creations. Although Thai food can be, and some would say should be, fiery, that has been toned down for the American palate. You can get the kitchen to up the heat, but you might have to convince your server that you know what you are asking for and won’t balk when the fire is turned on.

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-- Nancy Lewis