Can the greatness of a country’s cuisine be measured by its humblest dishes? In Thailand, hoi tod is street food: fat mussels sprung from their shells and beached on a crepe with crackly edges and, inside, slow surrender, that mystical union of crunchy-gooey.
Typically, the crepe comes in a broken heap, the messier the better. But on a recent night at Dek Sen in Elmhurst, Queens, it was presented whole, as if it were a pizza — albeit one that looked like a fossilized doily, spiked with fish sauce and buoyed on a bed of bean sprouts.
Its open face was a mottle of yolk and white, from an egg cracked just before the finish. It tasted of salt and sweet brine, and was no less delicious for being so tidy.
Dek Sen opened last March in a shallow storefront haunted by earlier incarnations. Ghost letters on the bright yellow awning still say Himalaya Kitchen. The “house rules” stuck on the front door — “respect one another”; “always tell the truth” — are a holdover from the previous tenant, Plant Love House.
The menu makes no pretense of being encyclopedic. The chef, Wirot Sirimatrasit (known as Ex), cooks alongside his mother, Ramphai Rinnasak, focusing on the kind of unshowy, full-flavored dishes that are the running stitch of a Thai childhood. This is food as balm for the homesick, speaking directly to the Thai immigrants who live in the neighborhood — though all are welcome.
Mr. Sirimatrasit was born in Bangkok, but his mother comes from Phetchabun, in north-central Thailand, to the west of the Isan region. Some of the finest dishes here have the stamp of the north.
Foremost among them is laab, as generous a rendition as I’ve found in the city. The pork is coarsely chopped and strewn with nubs of liver, yielding and creamy. Every bite is a small tumult: lacerating lime; a basal note of fish sauce and undersea funk; enough chile to make you start taking shallow breaths. The tiny pops under the teeth come from khao khua, glutinous rice grains roasted and ground to a powder.
Tiger Cry is skirt steak slashed into ruby-hearted strips, in a sweat of soy, oyster sauce and sugar. It’s meant to be anointed with jaew, a sauce that prizes smoke over sweetness, with sour tamarind countered by chiles and more of that roasted rice. (The tiger’s anguish is envy, because you’re the one who gets to eat.)
A half duck, illustrated on the blackboard as a yellow rubber ducky, emerges from the deep fryer armored and shining, under dark leaves of holy basil whose taste and fragrance are inseparable — expansive and warming, pepper and musk. A deep-fried gourami is laid out, headless but tail and fins intact, on an altar of fried rice threaded with more pieces of fish: buried treasure.
But you could happily build a meal entirely of snacks — steamed white radish cake, bronzed in a pan and wearing tatters of egg; pork patted down with crushed cilantro roots, earthier than the stems, and thrust on skewers in overlapping formation to keep the juices from fleeing; a papaya salad as refreshing as an inferno can be.
I had a few regrets, like a dish of char-siu-like barbecue pork with a virulently red gravy that called to mind melted lollipops, and a gummy bite of fermented sausage larded with flaps of pork skin. Noodles (sen) are trumpeted in the restaurant’s name and logo, but they’re mostly unmemorable on the plate, like bean-thread noodles in an oversweet “suki” (short for sukiyaki) sauce and a pork blood noodle soup somehow missing its urgent mineral tang.
One of Mr. Sirimatrasit’s hopes in opening the restaurant was to bring his family together. He and his mother used to cook at different restaurants in Manhattan. Now they spend their days side by side, while his wife, Tara Atthakorn (known as Noon), runs the floor; his cousin Atthachai Rinnasak helps in the kitchen, while another cousin, Chaidawid Rinnasak, waits tables; and the waiter’s girlfriend, Jie Liang, is in charge of desserts.
These include a rainbow crepe cake — 20 layers, with seams of whipped cream — that she taught herself to make by watching YouTube. It is a study in the potency of sugar and air. Better yet is ice cream lush with coconut milk and studded with corn and jackfruit, scooped over sticky rice.
Dek sen means, literally, child noodles. But it’s also a colloquial term for someone who’s well connected. Ms. Atthakorn likes the double meaning — “like we’re a powerful gangster family,” she said, with a laugh.
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