From Kliman Online's "Word of Mouth"

Nark Kara, a new Thai restaurant in Bethesda, is intriguing, and not because its dining room is aswirl in color and light or because its menu is full of clever, unexpected concoctions or because its presentations are look-at-me artful-- the usual means by which Thai places seek to distinguish themselves from the pack.

In fact, the dining room puts you in mind of a sauna, with its horizontal slats of blond wood, the menu couldn't be more doctrinaire, and the plating, by the standards of its showier competitors, feels almost restrained.

But then you dig into the nam sod, the pork counterpart to larb, and find a soft, almost spongy texture to the ground meat. If its flavors are not quite as balanced as you might hope, it's encouraging to see the kitchen err on the side of brightness and pungency; it relies heavily, here, on the fish sauce, nuoc mam, and a few good, generous squeezes of lime juice. The tightly bundled dumplings known as kanom jeeb, too often gluey and dense, are rendered as delicate, one-bite morsels, half the size of what you typically find, and carefully garnished with fried onion.

Drunken noodles, another warhorse, has a similar lightness of touch. The noodles aren't served in a bowl, as is usual -- they're presented on a plate, casserole-style, with interleavings of meat. Nice touch. It eliminates some of the gloppiness that often occurs when hot noodles are allowed to congeal in a small bowl. Nicer is the fact that the noodles spend some time on the grill, picking up some good char and smoke. The result is a dish that resembles street food at its best -- visceral and addictive.

Duck in red curry is as good a version as I've tried in recent years, a vivid, colorful bowl sporting well-rendered meat (which, though not quite luscious, is also not fatty), an abundance of holy basil (its dark, limp leaves looking like seaweed), and a gravy that is unrelenting in its heat. Pineapple and tomato are common additions -- sweetness to balance heat -- but the kitchen also tosses red grapes into the mix. Who knew? They're fabulous in the curry, a perfect match.

-September 11, 2007