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If you're looking for luxury and elegance, My Choice is not your kind of restaurant.

That's a pity, though, because if you put ambience over fine cuisine, you're going to miss one of the city's better Thai restaurants.

Thai people who appreciate good food have long known My Choice, though.

After 12 years at Sukhumvit Soi 33, the restaurant relocated to Sukhumvit Soi 36 (Soi Napasap) eight years ago, and in a shady compound with plenty of parking, has continued to offer what it calls "traditional Thai cuisine".

But as owner, recipe-developer and quality-controller Pichit Charusorn (Noi) admits, the dishes at My Choice are traditional - and they aren't.

"Call the food a modern version based on traditional Thai cuisine," he says, adding that he usually adds or changes an element in the dish, just to give it a different touch.

With his yam pladook foo, for > instance, he has altered the traditional presentation.

This dish consists of catfish that has been broiled, the meat separated from the bones and deep-fried.

The sauce of sliced green mango, palm sugar, vinegar and chilli traditionally accompanies the catfish but is served in a separate container, a gravy boat or a small dish.

At My Choice, the sauce is poured over the top of the broiled and deep-fried catfish before the dish is rushed to the guest's table.

No pouring, no asking, "Shall I dump everything on top now?" The dish, though, is just as attractive, and, frankly, just as tasty.

One dish Noi brought out is not on the menu.

This one is his own creation, a dish that takes a vegetable that was a staple in ancient times and that, in his hands, is turned into a traditional yam.

This is yam mara, and it brings up a difference in taste preferences between older and younger generations of Thais, and between Thais and foreigners.

We have, I think, come to expect a mild or understated sweetness in the vegetables we eat, from corn to tomatoes to beans.

But bitter gourd is unabashedly unsweet, an alien taste perhaps, but one easy to get used to.

Here, however, Noi tops the dish with fried sliced shallots.

In addition, it is lime juice that provides the sourness required by a yam.

Noi explains that other restaurants usually use tamarind juice - "but here we try not to follow the others".

For something really different, Noi brings out his yam platoo, smiling slightly when he sees my reaction.

This not a simple plate of yam, but along with the mackerel are pieces of ginger, shallots and lemon grass as well as leaves, bai cha-phroo.

"It's usually called 'miang platoo'," he says - miang when the dish calls for piling one leaf with a piece of the fish along with the various accompaniments, wrapping the leaf up tightly and then politely cramming the whole package in your mouth.

Noi bases his choice of tamarind or lime juice on his own sense of taste and complementarity.

His clear gaeng som with okra and fish maw has a touch of lime, while the heavier gaeng som plachon with its red curry paste, coriander root, garlic shallots and krachi, is flavoured with tamarind juice for a stouter flavour to go with the strong tang of the serpent-head fish.

It's all in the sense of taste.

Among the most popular dishes is Noi's deep-fried plachon, which is served with its eggs in season.

Another art involves deep-frying, and this fish has the right degree of crispiness without any oiliness seeping through.

Most customers to My Choice are families, but Noi would like to see more foreigners enjoying his creations.

"Perhaps there is too much chilli," he worries, but the dishes are already marked according to their degree of spiciness, and if you don't like the heat, just ask for a little less.

At My Choice, you can go for the standard tom yam goong, which is very fine - or you can go on a Thai-style culinary adventure, sampling dishes you won't find in other restaurants.

Noi has another way of expressing it: "At My Choice, we try to show you the art of eating.

" Laurie Rosenthal THE NATION >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dining details MY CHOICE RESTAURANT 5 Sukhumvit Soi 36 (Soi Napasap) Telephone: 02-258-6174 Open daily 11am to 11pm All major credit cards accepted