The best dish at @wana.yook , set in a restored, century-old colonial house in Bangkok, is their play on khao kriap pak moh: a street snack built around an unusually delicate method, in which a thin rice-flour batter is spread directly onto a taut cloth stretched over a pot of simmering water and cooked à la minute, producing gossamer, gently tacky skins without the density of boiled rice dough or the bounce of tapioca-heavy wrappers.

The easy route, and one many chefs would take, would be to tuck caviar inside and present it as some elevated byproduct of their worldly escapades. The chef @chaleekader , blessedly, isn’t so slavish to these Eurocentric ideas of luxury. He loosens the dumpling’s moorings, swapping minced pork for sweet crab and fried garlic for a floral, mildly tart broth of coconut and mangosteen, split with a Vietnamese coriander oil called Rau ram. It’s a dish that will haunt you, as do several other dishes on Kader’s menu.

To understand Kader’s philosophy is to know that the stark transition from delicate, elemental dishes to fiery soups and lancing curries is structurally Thai, even if the pork has become crab; the curry a foam; or a communal relish set contracted into a single plate. These dishes will all eventually coalesce into a narrative that works. Yes, my favorites among them appeared earlier in the menu. Notably, Kader’s miniaturized ode to Khao soi, where the texture of fried noodles cedes to a tartlette; as well as his ‘daily relish,’ a terrine flanked by paper-thin claws of soft-shell crab, propped like the wings of a Viking helmet, and set in a sauce dotted with deeply aromatic makrut-leaf oil.

But the khao gaeng deserves its due, too. We greedily expanded it with all nine kub-khao dishes: curries, stir-fries, salads and grilled beef arranged around rice. Best among them was yum phra ram doen dong, its pork jowl carrying the plushness of coconut-rich braised meat even after the coconut had disappeared. I preferred the first half of our meal, but very little rice survived the second. Thanks VP and GW for paving the way. A meal to remember. Less