Jamjuli

The Thai-food spectrum gets brighter

by Robert Nadeau

DINING OUT

Jamjuli 1203 Walnut Street, Newton Highlands (617) 965-5655 Open Mon-Thurs, 11:30 a.m.- 9:30 p.m.; Fri and Sat, 11:30 a.m.- 10:30 p.m.; Sun, 4:30-9:30 p.m. AE, MC, Visa Beer and wine No smoking Street-level access

Jamjuli represents a return to the days when each new Thai restaurant seemed to open at a higher level of quality, with new and amazing dishes. Contributing to this sense of continuity is the fact that the chef here worked previously at Amarin of Thailand, which was one of the last openings in that early wave in which Thai food so rapidly displaced Szechuan food for those in search of vivid, exotic flavors. (Jamjuli also represents a return to exotic names; the word comes from the name of a tree, which looks like a cedar in the profile the restaurant uses as a logo.)

Excellence announces itself in the opening hot-and-sour shrimp soup ($2.50), with its superb balance of spices and fresh lime juice. Glass-noodle soup ($2.50) is the no-spice version for cowards, but is built upon an excellent chicken stock, and the vegetables are fresh. Mee grob ($5.25), a dish of sweet-and-sour fried noodles (and a few shrimp), is a northern Thai specialty that we seldom see in Boston's Thai restaurants, but it will be as popular as pad Thai once it gets established.

Working from the "Jamjuli sample" ($6), I determined that the vegetarian rolls ($4 by themselves) are the pick of the fried appetizers, for their cunning mixture of vegetables and noodles, their crispy thinness, and their sweet-hot dipping sauce. Not that the Siam rolls ($4.25), which add chicken, are less than delicious. And not that the shrimp in a blanket ($5.75) aren't swell, too. Golden ka-tong ($5.75) are served in fried flowers made from spring-roll wrappers. The concept is excellent, though the flowers' filling of finely diced meats, peas, and carrots was somewhat dull -- but again, this may prove to be just the dish for reluctant explorers.

The mustn't-miss specialty is the "superior duck" ($15.25). This is a boneless roast duck that has something of the Peking-duck combination of crispy skin and juicy meat, but then it has these extras: a bed of stir-fried mustard cabbage, a topping of fried basil leaves, and a sweet-sour sauce based on mango chutney. Everything works, and the combination brings back the feeling you got when you ate at the first Thai restaurants -- that there was suddenly this brilliant cuisine unlike anything else.

"Jamjuli Garden" ($8.75) is a bland dish that shows off excellent peanut sauce on poached chicken or pork, undercooked broccoli, ideally cooked cauliflower, and green beans. "Shrimp in the Garden" ($10.25) has another option for spice-haters, a "whole yellow bean sauce" that is slightly sweet and slightly salty -- a very intriguing answer to Cantonese food, with baby-corn ears, eggplant, basil, and scallions, as well as shrimp and pineapple.

Hot curries are certainly hot, but also very, very good. Chicken green curry ($9) is deadlier than its two-silhouette rating suggests, but an excellent foil for the buttery green-striped Thai eggplant, green beans, and asparagus. Beef penang ($9) at the same rating is almost as spicy, with a red curry sauce toned up with lemon leaves and coconut milk, showing best the green beans, baby corn, and straw mushrooms.

To soak up these sauces, pad Thai ($7.25) is good, and the steamed jasmine rice ($1 each) even better. Jamjuli has a few desserts, including a nice ginger ice cream ($2.50) and platters of iced rambutan or litchi ($2 each) with some canned fruits and syrup.

Service is good, even when the restaurant is quite crowded on a weekend night. Décor is gorgeous, with tastefully deployed collections of small carved jars and even smaller lithographs in large frames on the wall. The room, which has been the site of several other restaurants, is glass-enclosed, but does not get too loud or drafty.

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I was on a plane to New Orleans when I read of the Newton fire that demolished Go Fish. My mixed review appeared the next day, and that's never happened before in 26 years (this month) of reviewing. For the record, we need all the seafood restaurants we can get, and I hope the Go Fish folks give it another try in Boston. I know I'm not a jinx -- I did plenty of eating around in New Orleans, and none of those places had to close.

It was my first visit to New Orleans since 1972, but Creole food is eternal. On visits to Uglesich's and Acme Oyster House, the oysters were as sweet as ever, although the shrimp are not what they were. Crayfish were considered country-bumpkin food in 1972. I still think that boiled crayfish are rather fishy and overspiced on their own, but they do make beer taste remarkably good.

As a general observation, restaurant meals are not only better in New Orleans, they are also generally cheaper at the same level of quality than they are in Boston. This likely reflects cheaper rent and labor. Our fancy night out was at Bayona, where chef Susan Spicer makes New American food taste French -- a buttery red snapper was the highlight. If you go to the enormous buffet brunch at the Court of Two Sisters, don't miss the grits with okra sauce.

The restaurant we went back to, however, was the Praline Connection, which features a particularly effective style of "Creole soul food." Thus you can have red beans and rice with fried chicken, and probably should. The fried okra alone would make the reputation of this restaurant, which is African-American owned and has a comfortably mixed crowd we don't often see in Boston.

The Café du Monde, home of beignets and chicory coffee, has moved to vast new quarters, and now has a corps of Thai waiters. What was new to me was the fresh-squeezed orange juice -- why don't a few Boston restaurants try that? I had missed the celebrated muffuletta at Central Grocery the last time, and missed it again this time; Central was out of bread. That sent us to their 80-year competition, Progress Grocery, which touts a superior olive salad. The Sicilian olive salad is the point of this enormous round version of an Italian sub. After half, I didn't think I'd eat again that day, but I did.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at robtnadeau@aol.com.

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