Like other cuisines—Italian and Chinese creep to mind—unearthing good Thai can be confounding. It can be listless. It can be sloppy. It can be uninspiring. Royal Thai shakes up the ennui, not only with fresh cuisine, but with its Thai elegance and sophisticated staging that includes a wine list fraught with clear thinking (acid lush whites and reds along with the usual Chard-Cab brigade). Tom kha gai, a soup of galangal, coconut milk, chicken, mushrooms, lemongrass, kaffir lime and chilies is an opus of tart and spicy. Tender, juicy satay begs for dunks in an appropriately spicy peanut sauce (these choosy mothers didn't choose Jif!). Salads, like the searing yahm plah meuk with calamari, lemongrass, mint and lime, or the brisk chicken lahb bedded on clean iceberg lettuce shreds, can be meals, humming as they do with flavor you can feel all the way down to your hangnails. Smooth curries are here, as are the whole fried fishes (cat and snapper), battered and brittle and moist and spiced like the best of them. Which they are.