This restaurant is the real thing, just with the soft pedal down when it comes to the heat.
A cold, rainy, windy day in Athlone, the Shannon inexorably rising with every drop, and I find myself in search of lunch, something to keep out the winter. And, following the advice of lots of locals, I head off to an establishment that smells of gravy granules. Worse still, the food tastes of gravy granules. There's just me and Paolo Tullio, my colleague from the television series The Restaurant. It is a bleak meal.
And so, the next day, we go in search of Kin Khao Thai, a restaurant that has been mentioned by precisely nobody in the locality but that I visited a couple of years ago for a quick and very happy bite. It's in a ramshackle house with walls that lean in a way unenvisaged in the building regulations and whose exterior is painted a luminous yellow.
Much nonsense is talked about authentic Thai food in Ireland. We simply don't have any, and that's because authentic Thai chilli heat is far too much for us.
You have to be brought up to endure and then enjoy the fire, and we spend most of our time eating rather bland stuff, such as roast beef and sausages. We haven't a hope of developing the asbestos palate that much true Thai food requires.
And so our so-called Thai restaurants are about as authentic as tribunal memory-loss syndrome. But Kin Khao Thai is as close as we get to the real thing. Indeed, it is the real thing, just with the soft pedal down when it comes to the heat.
I know this because my Thai beef salad merely scorched me. The absolutely genuine article would have left just a small pile of ashes in my place. I ordered Thai beef salad because it is usually awful. Even when I make it myself it's a travesty (but, as travesties go, it's not bad). I once got a version that involved salad cream and brown sauce.
Kin Khao's version was smoulderingly good. It was small, the beef fillet was just done, the crunchy salad was in perfect proportion to the meat and the dressing was incandescent. It crept up on the palate and quietly slipped the lead into the boxing glove.
By the time I had finished I could feel nothing except an all-over glow and beads of sweat trickling down my brow. It was bloody brilliant. And then, moments later, the endorphin rush. Immensely satisfactory.
Po tak was only slightly less hot.
This sour-and-spicy seafood soup was similarly invigorating and had none of the overextracted fishiness you sometimes get with oriental seafood stocks.
Jungle curry (gang pa) - based on the northern Thai tradition, which eschews coconut milk, because coconuts don't grow well there - was a fiery concoction of tender beef fragrant with lemon grass and galangal. The absence of coconut's creamy foil threw all the flavours into sharp focus.
We made a point of asking Adam Lyons, who runs Kin Khao with his Thai wife, Janya, what dish should not be missed. He unhesitatingly nominated his mother-in-law's version of ho mok gai, in which minced chicken takes the place of the usual fish.
The meat is flavoured with kaffir lime leaves, red curry paste and basil and cooked in coconut milk to yield a subtle and intensely aromatic dish. It was glorious - and quite a contrast to the more mainstream variations on the chilli theme.
Sticky rice with coconut custard may sound a bit heavy; you may feel the Orient just doesn't do puddings as we understand them; you may be one of those unfortunates who hate coconut. Whatever the case, this dessert was an eye-opener. I would cross the Shannon for it.
We enjoyed lots of Athlone tap water and a bottle of classic dry Australian Riesling from Peter Lehmann and wrapped up with a brace of excellent espressos. The bill came to €82.80.
Kin Khao Thai, Abbey Lane, Athlone, Co Westmeath, 090-6498805
WINE CHOICE
Our Peter Lehmann Riesling - perfect with this meal - was a steal at €18.
You can get Oz Rieslings that cost more than twice as much but deliver less zing.
Other attractions include peachy Finca las Moras Viognier (€18), from Argentina, off-beat Château Jolys Jurançon Sec (€22.80) and the classic Moreau-Naudet Chablis (€30).
Kim Crawford (€28), Waimea (€27.50) and Glazebrook (€26.80) amount to a formidable trio of Kiwi Sauvignons, all Thai-friendly and very keenly priced.
Leonardo Chianti (€21.50) is a great buy, but it would need to be confined to the less fiery dishes. Château Haut Rian Bordeaux Rosé (€21) would work with just about everything.