Best Thai Restaurant

River Spice has a fairly typical Thai menu with clever atypical touches. Pad Thai is often an effective barometer of Thai kitchen brilliance--or haplessness. It's far too often cloyingly sweet or a sticky knot of noodles or a soupy mess or some frightening combination of all three. Here, it is superb. At the far end of the plate is a curved cup of sheer rice paper that reaches a few inches above the plate and embraces--like a concert shell--a river of gently twisting noodles and crisp bean sprouts, egg, crushed peanuts and scallions in a culinary freeze-frame on the plate. Panang pork delivers a similar thrust with strips of tender juicy pork, bell pepper, gently bending green beans and tears of basil leaf deposited into a rich, fragrant curry sauce. Whole fried fish is compelling, as are most of the fried foods--spring rolls and curry dumplings, for example. A transparent glass water wall tinkles in the entrance to animate the river part of the moniker. (A River Spice extension recently opened in the structure off Lower Greenville that was once home to Liberty Noodles.)