A little more than three weeks after Naviya's Thai Brasserie opened in Linden Hills, the restaurant-starved residents of southwest Minneapolis crowded into Naviya's tiny foyer to wait for a table.

Wait a minute, "restaurant-starved"? These folks have a slew of options -- from Cafe Maude to Broders' to Pizzeria Lola -- and yet, the tables and the foyer were full. These people (and here I'll have to include myself) just love their neighborhood restaurants. And Naviya's, I predict, is going to play very nicely with the other neighborhood kids.

Owner Naviya LaBarge, a native of Thailand, rules the kitchen, cooking to order on very hot woks. That means crispy, sweet vegetables, a smoky, charred flavor, and sometimes some longer-than-usual waits. Despite calling her place a brasserie, LaBarge hasn't departed too far from the Asian restaurant formula. There are 60-some items on the menu with no real surprises, from spring rolls and cream cheese wontons (a phenomenon I will never understand) to Pad Thai and green and red curries.

The red curry, so far, gets best in show. Rich, deep and smoky, with that signature charred flavor, it enrobed noodle-like threads of crisp bamboo shoots and silky, tender bits of beef. The menu describes it as having a heat that sneaks up on you -- very true, although I'd call it more sneaky than spicy.

The Bangkok hot plate, a showy, sizzling, fajita-style dish, is advertised as something that "robs you of your senses." The shrimp were plentiful, tender and sweet, wearing a blanket of roasted minced garlic and cilantro, along with still-crisp onions, cauliflower, carrots and broccoli. It was the sort of dish that, even if one hungry diner polished it off by herself, wouldn't leave a trail of broken New Year's resolutions behind it.

The turkey basil stir fry is a Minnesotanization that works especially well. The ground turkey from Ferndale Farms in Cannon Falls carries the Thai flavors -- interesting but still mild -- and adds a little richness. And the fried rice was a nice surprise: not a lick of grease, making it almost a completely different dish from its more familiar namesake. It was also packed with fresh vegetables and tender chicken, but rather light on flavor.

At lunch, there are about 10 scaled-down dinner menu offerings for $10-$12. They all come with either a ginger-dressed salad or the soup of the day, and this is where things go wrong. The salad is a complete throwaway: indifferent iceberg lettuce torn up in non-mouth-friendly sizes, tossed in a pleasantly gingery but otherwise unbalanced dressing. The coconut lemongrass soup was thin and flat, a vinegary kind of sour, lacking the hot/sweet/salty sides of Asian flavors. The disappointment was especially sharp because tom kha gai can be so uplifting and addictive when it is at its best.

With a couple of exceptions, Naviya's food tastes great and is very well suited to its neighborhood. It's too early to tell whether Naviya's will become a destination for Thai food lovers from around the metro area, but it's definitely a spot that will keep southwest Minneapolis very happy.

The churn

If you can convince yourself that pizza's a worthy casualty of a gluten-free diet, more power to you. If not, stop by Valley Natural Foods on Wednesday to learn a versatile flatbread/pizza crust recipe. Preregistration is required. (6:30 p.m. Wed. $27-$32. 13750 County Rd. 11, Burnsville. 952-891-1212.)

  • The Heavy Table team writes about food and drink in the Upper Midwest five days a week at www.heavytable.com.