Brown Sugar Café

The young owners from Bangkok named their café Brown Sugar because they use brown sugar in many of their dishes and because "it's easy to remember." At lunchtime, you can choose from more than 50 menu items (the most expensive is the spicy "Fisherman Madness," at $6.25). The restaurant has a comfortable feel -- from its small but neat dining room to its soul-soothing jazz recordings. A dish of spicy string beans with snow peas, thinly sliced pork loin, roasted cashew nuts, ground peanuts, and red pepper ($5.50) is almost addictive. And the Brown Sugar fried rice ($4.95) --with brown rice, egg, chicken, shrimp, onion, broccoli, and tomatoes -- is moist and flavorful. A crock of tom khar gai, a tangy chicken-coconut soup with mushrooms, lime juice, galanga, and chilies ($2), is also available without chicken, for vegetarians. Dinner prices run higher, with curries ranging in price from $6.95 to $8.95, and fish, poultry, beef, and pork dishes from $8.95 to $12.95. All vegetarian dinner entrees cost $6.95.

The Brown Sugar Café, located at 129 Jersey Street (off the Fenway) in Boston, is open daily for lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner hours are Sunday through Thursday from 4 to 10 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 4 to 11 p.m. Call 266-2928. Take-out is available.

-- Nancy Kalajian