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Friday, May 31, 2002

By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The warm, inviting smell of Thai food greets you as you near the top step of the narrow stairwell leading diners from Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill to Bangkok Balcony inside the newly renovated space that used to house the Lemongrass.

	Bonnie Hendrix looks over the menu at Bangkok Balcony in Squirrel Hill. (Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette)

The sun has just begun to set as we take our seats beneath a tree that, sadly, doesn't shade my eyes from the glare through the window.

It's my one complaint with Bangkok Balcony, although I'm sure that some would find it on the noisy side. The room is long and exceedingly open with high wooden ceilings and perhaps a few too many tables squeezed in side by side. But there's something surprisingly intimate about the atmosphere. The lighting helps, fading to yellow from red as you move from the bar at the back of the room to the sunnier seats in the giant window overlooking Forbes.

On our first trip, the service is friendly and helpful, offset by an edgy playfulness that leaves me wondering if the waitress acts that way to everyone. We found it charming. Others may be less inclined to do so. On our second trip, the service isn't half as friendly, half as helpful or a tenth as playful -- merely competent.

But it isn't the service or the atmosphere -- or even the cutlery -- that people tend to rave about when Bangkok Balcony comes up in conversation.

It's the food.

From appetizers to an awe-inspiring $3 dessert of Thai custard and sweetened rice that I fully intend to order every time I go there, I have yet to encounter a disappointing dish.

It even works as take-out.

And it's really inexpensive.

Appetizers range from satay chicken served with both peanut and cucumber sauce to steamed pork dumplings, spring rolls and a number of outstanding seafood dishes, including the one that sold me on the Balcony my first time there -- a $7 plate of stir-fried mussels with sweet chili paste and basil served with vegetables so crisp you'd swear they had a farm out back. They don't, of course, but freshness is the key to many of the dishes here, even the soups (I'd never dreamed of -- much less tasted -- mushrooms in a soup as fresh as the ones in the Balcony's lemongrass soup). The stir-fried mussel dish is sweet, but not too sweet, and spicy, too, with each ingredient taking a turn in the spotlight, then retreating to support the other flavors, the basil providing a subtle minty cameo. Another highly recommended appetizer is the $7 plate of mussel fritters served with sauteed bean sprouts and sriracha chili sauce. Again, the key is freshness. And again, the individual ingredients stand out, from the sauce to the egg.

The salad choices range from vegetarian and seafood plates to chicken, beef and sliced Thai sausage, for that extra kick you rarely find in salad. While the sausage salad is among the hotter items I encounter at the Balcony, the sausage itself is surprisingly sweet. And lean. The kick is in the lime juice and hot pepper dressing.

Selecting a main course at the Balcony can take a while -- too many choices, most of which look really good in print and all of which taste better than they read.

As dependable staples go, the $9 pad thai is lighter and nuttier than most pad thai I've found in Pittsburgh -- fresher, too, especially the bean sprouts.

The $11 Mussaman curry is even better -- giant chunks of chicken and potatoes in coconut milk with peanuts and a creamy curry paste that's more about the flavor than the spiciness of curry -- well, at least it is at 7 on their spicy scale of 1 to 10.

The $15 Thai spaghetti with green curry, served with jumbo shrimp, is spicier, the noodles more like angel hair than actual spaghetti. It's a light dish, but a satisfying one. The $9 lemongrass noodles are spicier, too, but not too spicy -- wide, flat noodles, nicely textured and cooked to perfection with basil leaves and spicy garlic sauce.

The $15 seafood with basil leaves, which we foolishly order the same night we order the basil appetizer, is essentially the appetizer with more seafood to go with the mussels -- scallops, squid, jumbo shrimp and whitefish. While I'd hesitate to recommend you try them both in one night, you should try them both eventually. It is the sort of restaurant you'll find yourself returning to.

Bangkok Balcony
5846 Forbes Ave.,
Squirrel Hill
412-521-0728

Hours: Sun.-Thurs. noon-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. noon-11 p.m.

The basics: Appetizers: $3-$7. Soups: $3-$4. Salads: $5-$7. Entrees: $9-$15; smoke-free; no reservations; all major credit cards accepted; not wheelchair-accessible.

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