When Pandan Leaf opened in Coolidge Corner, I thought perhaps a wave of Malaysian restaurants would challenge Thai restaurants just as Thai restaurants had often replaced Mandarin-Szechuan restaurants in the affections of Boston diners. But three years later, Pandan Leaf closed and the Malaysian wave had failed to materialize. Now the owner of Pandan Leaf has opened Soya’s in an out-of-the way location in Newton (perhaps best remembered for Moon Woman Café). Understandably, he’s added a few popular pan-Asian items — one can hardly have an Asian restaurant in Newton without General Gau’s chicken or satay. But we may be marking the end of a trendlet, as many of the Malaysian/Singaporean items on the menu have been altered with Thai or Mandarin-Szechuan sauces.

People who never ate at Pandan Leaf will here find a serviceable pan-Asian menu with some real highlights. Maybe those of us who do remember Pandan Leaf will have to just get over it, since many of its Malaysian dishes have been dropped from Soya's menu. While few non-Asians will miss the dessert drinks with odd beans and colored jellies, the complicated yee sang cold plate was a splendid dish, and the pandan chicken was a lot of fun. Pandan Leaf had already conceded a point by serving belachan (shrimp-chili paste) only on the side; at Soya’s it’s completely absent. And the dishes it has retained can be deceptive. A lot of people liked roti canai, a Malaysian appetizer of fried flatbread with a hot Tamil chicken curry as a dip. Now renamed " Indian pancake " ($2.50), the bread is good, but the dip is a diluted Thai red-curry sauce. Gado gado ($5.95), an Indonesian salad, used to have jicama with a really fresh sweet-hot curry sauce. The substitution is julienned yellow and green summer squash, and another diluted Thai curry glopping up the hard-boiled egg, green beans, bean sprouts, and fresh cress. Char kway teow ($6.75), described as " traditional Singapore chow foon, " is now mostly soy-flavored, like Chinese-American fried rice, only made with pad Thai noodles. In all three cases, prices are down. I suggest raising them a dollar or two and restoring the old flavors.

Where Soya’s has advanced on the appetizer front, it is with fried delights wrapped in bean-curd skins. These thin skins fry up crispy without absorbing the grease, which reveals the underlying flavors, such as the pork-shrimp, dim-sum-style filling of the seafood in soya wrap ($5.95) or the savory contrast in the pork with taro in soya wrap ($5.25). The frying is also quite good on the crab Rangoon ($4.50), although you’re still aware of eating cream cheese in a fried wonton. We actually had our crab Rangoon and pork with taro wrap on a pu-pu platter for one ($6.95), but I don’t recommend this, as the boneless spareribs ($6.50 à la carte) were hardened, and the chicken fingers ($5.50) tasted both greasy and stale. Peking ravioli ($4.75) are the Chinatown kind with thick skins, but serviceable. Gyoza ($4.75) are made with spinach pasta, and stuffed with a vegetarian filling that may include avocado. Seaweed salad ($3.50) turns out to be the most soy-flavored dish at Soya’s, and an excellent foil for the other food. It’s also served in a martini glass for extra fun.

My favorite main dish is beef rendang ($11.50), an Indonesian offering of sliced beef that comes to the table like the world’s most tender pot roast, but nicely flavored by a curry with ground coriander. I’m also still fond of " Stingray " ($11.25), a large skate wing with a gingery-sweet-sour tamarind sauce. Skate is actually mild-flavored seafood, but it seems to mount spicy sauces well.

For vegetables, you can’t go wrong with sautéed basil asparagus ($7.50), a really big platter of roll-cut, fat green asparagus. There’s not much filler — mostly snow-pea pods and carrots — and it's all served in a sweet-sour sauce that doesn’t carry much of the Asian-basil flavor. You need a richer curry for that, which is why Thai food has basil and Chinese food largely doesn’t. I also enjoyed a straight Mandarin-Szechuan dish, yu shang eggplant with string beans ($8.25). This isn’t as gingery as in some Chinese restaurants, but the eggplant pieces melted in my mouth and the string beans had quite a lot of flavor.

Pipa duck ($15.50) is a whole duckling with much of the fat roasted out, glazed with " our unique blend of house sauce " — which I’d guess is the usual red glaze plus a little hoisin. Salmon fillet ($14.95) is a generous portion with grill marks, a little overcooked our night but with a Thai red curry strong on the lemongrass, making a fairly effective salmon choo chee. Mango shrimp ($11.95), from a list marked " On the Fruity Side, " is indeed made with pretty-ripe mango, and is thus awfully sweet, despite fine, large fried shrimp and some scallions.

That General Gau’s chicken is a reasonable suburban rendition ($9.25), nicely batter-fried chicken chunks in a sweet-and-sour sauce without enough of the usual ginger and hot pepper, but with nice baby corn cobs, straw mushrooms, and broccoli. A good Chinese-style rice comes for a $1 fee. " Coconut-flavored fried rice with turmeric " ($6.50, with your choice of chicken, beef, shrimp, or vegetable) certainly looked yellow, but didn't have much flavor of coconut.

Soya’s has an inexpensive list of wines that might go with some of the milder dishes, as well as beer, dangerous mixed drinks, and non-alcoholic coladas and daiquiris. I tried the KWV sauvignon blanc ($5.50 glass/$20.95 bottle), a South African bottling that is quite lemony enough for the fruity sauces, if not quite up to the sour-and-salty Asian flavors that generally rule out wine.

Soya’s is quite pretty, with nothing but the ochre quarry tile remaining from Italian incarnations past. Green walls, modern art, and quirky lamps suggest how far we’ve all come from lucky-orange and dragon motifs. The long room upstairs is calm and pleasant, while the first-floor bar has four TVs. We found service prone to pauses on both floors, perhaps because the restaurant has already attracted good crowds.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com