Best Thai Restaurant

There's something lively, cheerful, and undeniably authentic about the food at this Lower Haight classic: The chicken larb sparkles with mint and chili peppers; the hot-duck salad is earthly pleasure incarnate; the broiled prawns are sweeter and more delicious than you're used to; the peanut sauce is rich, chunky, and unfathomably deep. Other specialties include garlic-marinated, deep-fried quail, steamed seafood with basil and lemon leaves, skewered scallops with cucumber salad, and crab-stuffed, batter-fried prawns with Napa cabbage and garlic. The setting -- a trim, sunny Victorian brimming with icons and altars and objets d'art of all sorts -- makes for a charming rendezvous.