Lunch entrée $9
Lunch with soup $13
Dinner entrée $9
Dinner with soup $13
Thai tea or coffee $3
For three years, Sam Kopsombut, owner of PK Imports car service on Eighth Avenue, moonlighted as a contractor, building out a restaurant upstairs from his auto repair shop. If you ever drove by late at night and wondered why the lights were on in the little white house above the garage, that was Sam tinkering with the detailed woodwork and open kitchen that would give his tiny new eatery the intimate feeling of a beautifully crafted household. If you thought you saw him setting up a bird feeder in the parking lot, that's actually a Thai spirit house, installed to honor the spirits of the building.
Kopsombut is no stranger to the restaurant business. His sister Patti Myint owns the International Market, his brother Juk owned the bygone Salathai on West End Avenue, and his nephew Arnold Myint is the creative chef/owner behind ChaChah, PM and Suzy Wong's House of Yum. But since coming to the U.S. from Thailand 30 years ago, Kopsombut left restaurants to his family while he focused on cars. Now, Sam and wife Boonjit have moved their primary occupation from the downstairs garage to the Smiling Elephant, where they deliver a succinct menu of traditional Thai specialties.
If you stopped by over the holidays, you might have seen their son Guy or daughter Gift helping out during their breaks from Vanderbilt's engineering school and University of Tennessee's medical program, respectively. (Gift already holds a master's degree in nutrition from Columbia University and was quick to tell us that her parents cook with light olive oil and no MSG. Boonjit says Gift makes her add more vegetables to the family recipes.)
Smiling Elephant is a family operation through and through. The central focus of the twee room is a traditional noodle cart, manufactured by Boonjit's father and sent for use as a serving station at Smiling Elephant. (Gift points to the cart's wheels and remembers visiting her grandfather, Somsak Phaosricharoen, at his factory in Bangkok when she was little and helping him install spokes.) For now, the pots on the shiny cart are empty, but there are plans to fill them with soup once the crowd grows at Smiling Elephant. Given the quality of the food and the unique ambiance of the room, that won't be long.
The subtitle on the menu reads "Best Pad Thai Restaurant," and if our experience was any indicator, Smiling Elephant can make a strong claim for local superiority. The pretty trapezoidal plate was piled high with wide glassy noodles made from mung bean, interlaced with strips of red onion, red cabbage and studded with bits of fried egg and tofu. Plump bean sprouts and crushed peanuts added cool crisp accent to the warm noodles. On top of the generous knot, three plump butterflied shrimp posed in dramatic curlicues. Pad thai is available with chicken or pork, but diners with shellfish allergy should be aware that the recipe includes dried shrimp in the seasoning.
All lunch entrées are $9, with salad and dessert included for $13. At dinner, the prices rise to $11 and $15. The house vegetable soup included in the set was a gorgeous clear broth laced with fish sauce and dotted with zucchini and carrot slices, with lily pads of organic baby spinach lazing across the top.
Tom kha kai soup with cilantro and frilly fans of oyster mushrooms delivered a perfect balance of spicy kick and tempering coconut milk. The tom kha kai and other soups — served in rectangular bowls with deep ceramic spoons — made pretty overtures and will lure us to Smiling Elephant regularly during cold-and-flu season, when we'll also make a beeline for tea made with lemongrass that Boonjit grows beside the parking lot.
In fact, whenever sinuses kick in, Smiling Elephant will come to mind, because several of our meals were so spicy as to make our eyes water and our noses run. When it comes to spicing the food, Smiling Elephant is no shrinking violet. The green curry special — a pungent floral medley of tender shrimp, bamboo strips, water chestnuts, carrots and baby corn — became a physical challenge, but one that we relished and surmounted by pouring the coconut-curry sauce over a bed of jasmine rice to temper its sting.
Likewise, yum woon sen was an extremely piquant version of the mild lettuce wraps so popular on global-eclectic menus. Tender tags of chicken and soy threads in a tangy bath were unabashedly flecked with red pepper flakes. Served with four crisp fronds of Napa cabbage and sprinkled with shards of roasted rice, the dish pitted vibrant flavors of lime, fish sauce and chili against each other with a flavorful effect that teetered between overwhelming and intoxicating.
Not all dishes described as "spicy" delivered the same infernal blast. Pad kra pao, for example, modulated the heat of chili with garlic and basil in a stir-fry of tender pork. Plump strands of ground pork — resembling spaetzle — were tossed with basil leaves, which cooked down to black threads. The pairing of pork and rice, topped with a well-done fried egg, was disappointingly pale compared to the vibrant colors of other dishes. We wished the egg had been cooked less so the yolk would spill out across the plate, adding a unifying sauce to the well-flavored rice and pork.
The menu says dishes can be made mild, hot or "spicy Thai," so you can negotiate a reduced heat factor along the lines of "wussy American." Of course, there are plenty of mild items — including gemlike bites of fresh rolls, made with glassy green bean noodle, sprouts, scallions and carrots in soft rice wraps and topped with caramelized sweet radish marinated in plum sugar. Or you can explore menu strategies to mitigate the flame. Our best advice is to keep a tall frosty glass of iced Thai tea or coffee on the table. Stirred with thick sweet milk, the intensely caffeinated drinks can quell the fiercest heat, allowing you to enjoy even the most high-spirited of dishes.
Smiling Elephant serves lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com.
