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Very Best Restaurants: Tara Thai

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Tara Thai **
Bethesda , Vienna , $

Tara Thai is the sort of popular restaurant that can fill a room on a rainy Monday night. The Jacques Cousteau motifvivid blue walls with stylized fish and oxidized objetsgives one the sensation of scuba diving in an oh-so-hip corner of the sea. But Tara Thai isn't one of those places that's all form and no substance.

The food is sometimes eye-opening, sometimes provocative, but it is almost always delicious. Excellent starters include steamed open-faced dumplings with a crunchy mix of water chestnuts, crab, and pork; flavorful slices of beef that have been marinated, oven-dried, and flash-fried; expertly done Thai salads like green papaya. Main courses run from originals like mussels with hot chili paste and basil or honey-roasted duck on crisp noodles to the more commonplace: a homespun green curry bulked up with chicken and eggplant. Pad woon sen is the best of the noodle dishes, a mess of shrimp, pork, and mushrooms with cellophane noodles. And then there are the whole-fish preparations:Crispy flounder lacquered with chili-and-garlic sauce falls off the bone, every morsel moist; others, like rockfish with lemongrass in banana leaves, are less flashy but still have their boosters.

Desserts are as solid as the rest of the menu: black sticky rice pudding with coconut cream, mango and sticky rice, and pandan and coconut ice creams.

Tara Thai , 4828 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda ; 301-657-0488. Open daily for lunch and dinner. MapIt!

Tara Thai , 226 Maple Ave. West, Vienna ; 703-255-2467. Open daily for lunch and dinner. MapIt!

QUALITY: ****Excellent; *** Superior; **Very Good; * Good
PRICE RANGE: $$$= Very Expensive; $$ Expensive; $=Moderate; ¢=Inexpensive

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