Mad For Thai Food

The location was familiar—the corner of Wolfs Lane and Sparks Avenue—but the menu of a favorite Pelham haunt was decidedly different.

On Saturday night, was transformed for dinner into Nisa Lee Thai Café, with a full range of Thai favorites such as chicken satay, Thai spring rolls, pad thai and beef with basil.

Starting this weekend, the Thai menu will be offered in the evening on Saturdays and Sundays. It’s a clever way to get more use out of MAD’s space, but, more than that, it’s a welcome addition to the Pelham dining scene, bringing some much-needed variety to the lineup of restaurants along Wolf’s Lane and Fifth Avenue.

The chef and namesake of the restaurant, Nisa Lee, is a Pelham Manor resident who runs a catering business and is working on her first cookbook. A native of Thailand, she came to America with her family when she was a toddler.

To transform a coffeehouse into a Thai restaurant, Lee pulled the curtains that are usually tied back at the sides of the counter to cover the glass cases and coffee equipment. Woven placemats and candles dressed up the usually bare tables.

Out front, a temporary sign for the Thai café covered the MAD logo on the Wolf’s Lane window.

My wife Ann and I stopped by on Saturday evening for a late dinner. We’re longtime fans of Thai food, going back to our days in Chicago, where Thai restaurants big and small, modest and ambitious, started popping up in the 1980s.

We started with two standbys, chicken satay and spring rolls. The satay featured generous slices of moist chicken, a gratifying change from run-of-the-mill satays with dried-out meat. The peanut sauce that accompanied the dish was particularly delicious.

Lee told us it was made with peanut butter, massamun curry, agave and some crushed banana.

The crispy spring rolls came with a sweet dipping sauce that included bits of chili pepper to provide a little kick.

For our entrée, we split an order of pad thai, a generous hill of flat Thai noodles with shrimp, chicken and a sprinkling of ground peanuts to provide both flavor and texture.

The café does not yet have a liquor license, so for now, its bring your own. For the opening night, Andy Johnson of provided complimentary white wine, a grassy sauvignon blanc from New Zealand.

As the South American agave in the peanut sauce indicates, Lee offers her own interpretation of Thai dishes as well as some Thai takes on other cuisines. The appetizer menu includes a Thai beef taco, and among the entrees is braised beef short ribs—a favorite comfort food—with massamun curry, French beans and sweet potato.

An added bonus: Nisa Lee delivers to Pelham addresses. I only wish more Pelham restaurants offered that service.

Nisa Lee Thai Café is at MAD Café, 129 Wolfs Lane, Pelham. It’s open 5-10 p.m. on Saturdays and 4-10 p.m. on Sundays. Phones: 914-708-6446 or 914-844-1444. E-mail: nisaleecafe@nisalee.com.