Thai Market

Though the décor suggests Thai Market is merely a theme restaurant, the big-windowed, airy dining room may lure you inside nonetheless. Portions, though not precious, are smallish, but they're also well-matched to the very reasonable prices.

Yum neau (top photo; $7), a watercress salad with grilled skirt steak, mint, onion, and roasted rice, induced a nice, even burn; the green papaya salad called som tum, though Americanized with tomato, was suitably tart. Among the appetizers, I enjoyed the trio of steamed chicken dumplings with preserved radish ($4); a crispy crepe of coconut and minced shrimp ($5) was too sweet.

Beef Panang ($10) was fine — not spicy enough for my taste, but also not dried out as I sometimes find it. Nice texture to the flat noodles in the kui teiw kee mao (middle photo; $7 with the lunch special), but it didn't push the spices enough, either. (Perhaps this is simply a matter of convincing the servers, and the kitchen, to dial up the spices on request.)

For dessert, consider the taro cake over black sticky rice (bottom photo; $4).

Thai Market
960 Amsterdam Ave. (107th-108th Sts.)
212-280-4575