So how does a cuisine beloved by chefs and assorted ragged outer-borough chowhounds turn into a full-fledged Manhattan restaurant boomlet more or less overnight? That was the question that the grateful, slightly befuddled Thai-food scholars at my table pondered as we sat down to dinner at Lotus of Siam, the second prominent Thai-style restaurant to open in Manhattan in the last two months. We’d gathered, just weeks before, at Harold Dieterle’s accomplished West Village establishment Kin Shop, where the tables were jammed with people feasting on goat-neck curry and squid-ink soup. At this new restaurant, on the corner of 9th Street and Fifth Avenue, the tables were unaccountably jammed as well. The scholars stared in wonder at the menu, which contained fancy Alsatian wines, tongue-twisting classics like tom kha goong and nam prik hed, and even a great, football-size red snapper, fried whole, as in the kitchens of Bangkok, and smothered in drifts of basil and chiles.
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