Cox: Sonoma’s E-Saan Thai House is a gem

First impressions can lock in your opinions, even for years. But maybe they should be unlocked occasionally, lest you miss something special.

For instance, not long after it opened in 1994, I reviewed E-Saan Thai House in Sonoma and wasn’t impressed with the food or the decor. I never went there again for Thai food until just recently. Wow, did I get a pleasant surprise. The place blew the lock off my opinion.

First of all, the decor has been redone, with a series of charming paintings of Thai village scenes filling the walls. The room is small, with just a couple of dozen seats, but it’s cozy and clean, with a welcoming, friendly look. American music plays on the sound system.

Each table is set with a single fresh tulip in a bud vase, two forks and a knife, and a cloth napkin folded into a rosette. If you nab a take-out menu on the way out, you’ll find five familiar ingredients in Thai cuisine - kaffir lime, ginger, sweet basil, galangal, and lemongrass - listed on the back, with herbal and medicinal uses for each. I didn’t know, for instance, that the citrusy oil of lemongrass is a Thai cure for upset stomach and indigestion.

The cuisine served at E-Saan these days is prepared with a delicate and knowing hand. Vegetables are gently cooked so there’s still life in them. Or they’re not cooked at all, as in the Fresh Rolls ($6.95 ???½). Mint, lettuce, bean sprouts, cilantro, and a little tofu are placed on four wide sheets of rice noodles and rolled up. A bare bite refreshes the taste buds and leaves a clean taste in the mouth, and when dipped in the accompanying peanut sauce, subsequent bites become rich and savory.

Cucumber Salad ($4 ???) is a dish that’s not given a great deal of thought at too many Asian restaurants. But at E-Saan, this salad is made with bite-sized pieces of cucumber dressed in a sweetened rice vinegar, mixed with bits of red bell pepper, and given a tablespoon of ground peanuts on top. The sweet-sour dressing enhances the light, melon-y flavor of the cukes. And the portion is generous.

E-Saan is a name that refers to the east and west sides of Thailand, where regional cuisines can be quite different. The restaurant is literally a mom-and-pop shop. Sutisa Petpraset and her husband Setsan Suwansap are the owners. She runs the room and delivers the food, and he’s the chef responsible for the goodies that come from the kitchen.

No restaurant would be a Thai restaurant without a raft of curries. E-Saan offers seven kinds, which you can order with pork, tofu, chicken, beef, or prawns, and there’s a grilled salmon entrée topped with panang curry sauce and vegetables, too. Pork Red Curry ($8.99 ???) has slices of pork swimming in a deliciously funky coconut-milk broth. The funk comes from shrimp paste and fish sauce in the spicy red curry paste. The curry paste itself is a mix of herbs and spices like garlic, ginger, galangal, chilies, lemongrass, coriander, and whatever else the chef decides. Also in the curry: carrots, peas, and basil.

Garlic Chicken ($8.99 ??½) features chicken breast meat, black and white mushrooms, carrots, and basil in a light sauce that was supposedly made with sautéed fresh garlic and black pepper, but curiously didn’t have much flavor of garlic.

The thin strips of beef skirt steak used in Asian recipes can often be tough, but not with the dish called Prig Khing ($9.99 ???) at this restaurant. They were substantial, but not chewy. Green beans and carrots were treated with respect and gently cooked, then served with the beef strips in a curried brown sauce.

How can you try a Thai restaurant without trying the Pad Thai ($9.99 ???½)? I was glad I did, because this version was simply what every hungry belly longs for: heaps of rice noodles fried with egg, chicken, prawns, tofu, bean sprouts, green onions, chili powder, and ground peanuts. Too heavy a hand with the cooking oil and this dish can easily become greasy, but that didn’t happen here. This chef knows when enough is enough.

To sum up: Here’s a little gem of a restaurant with some of the best Thai food around, prepared by a chef who takes great care with his ingredients.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review for the Sonoma Living section. He can be reached at jeffcox@sonic.net.