A random email in my inbox found me making my way to Jitlada to meet up with fellow foodies for a trip to Thai Town's hottest restaurant. I'd been a few times already, but I wouldn't hesitate to have another go-'round for the purpose of further exploring southern Thai cuisine. One thing is for sure since my last trip -- the spices certainly didn't get any milder.

We opened with some rather basic renditions of Thai spring rolls and assorted satays. Even the mango salad, served next, didn't do much to make me feel like I was in any Thai restaurant of consequence. That was, until the rice salad came out. It's the headlining picture -- it's top with finely julienned threads of bai ma-gruut, which you probably know as kaffir lime leaf. It had all the things that I like about Thai food in one spicy bite, and finally I felt we had merged onto the freeway.

Following that, we were served with a turmeric-seasoned soup with chicken. While the casual observer might gloss this dish over, I'd come to find a simple chicken-broth soup to be the essence of Jitlada -- letting simple ingredients command the stage with their very vocal flavors. Here, the rich broth combined elements of sourness as well a touch of bitterness to bring great flavors to an otherwise innocuous dish.

From there we moved onto a pair of curries. The yellow curry pictured below on the left foreground contained catfish and wild tea leaves, while the green curry in the right background contained a wonderful variant of kaeng khiao waan. Rather than pairing the green curry and eggplant with mere chicken, Jitlada served it a hard-boiled egg wrapped stuffed in a fish ball. I remarked at the time that it reminded of that pub-favorite Scotch egg, but we were too busy wiping off the flop sweat to notice the similarities.

I took advantage of a new plate and decided to play some plating games with the next dish, nua sawan (Thai beef jerky). Marinated then baked then fried, this dish offered a wonderful textural change from all the curry, but the spices from the catfish (kaeng paa plaa duk) and the fish balls still rang resonant on my palate.

Still, the clean plate and the relative ease of poking slices of beef around made for a fun exercise.

I was actually most worried when the next dish came out. Heretofore, Jazz and her lovely daughter and niece were kind enough to offer us the kitchen's fiery creations, but only when she served the khua kling did she decide to actually warn us.

Normally a dry turmeric-flavored curry with beef, we were served the Phat(tha)lung-style which featured more coconut milk to escort even more heat. She served two versions, one with beef and the other with chicken, and the photo below shows the chicken version which was far more potent. Of course, describing the beef version as the less spicy of the pair is like describing Mussolini as less dangerous.

That dish wasn't so much hot as it was radioactive.

After waiting a while and gulfing down a Thai ice tea to try and allow the epithelial cells of my esophagus to regrow from the inferno I just ingested, we were presented with a whole fried seabass covered in turmeric, garlic and parsley.

I made sure to secure portions of the collar and cheek (the best part of any fish) but I think we were all still reeling from the chicken. Nevertheless, the fried skin of the seabass had great texture, and the bass itself held up to the high temperature by rewarding us with its great flavor. The garlic and turmeric were lost on me at this point, but I thought that the delicate yet firm mouthfeel of the seabass brought a welcome respite from the full front assault on my tongue.

Our final main actually brought a slice of home. The chicken and winter melon curry reminded me a lot of the Filipino dish tinola which my mother would often make. Rather than using the winter melon, the Filipino version uses green papaya to achieve similar textural effects. In Western culture, I could easily see this dish translated to use something as simple as a potato.

From there, we closed with the mango and sticky rice, but by that point the damage was done -- my tongue hadn't fallen off so much as it called a strike and formed a picket line around my mouth. The sweet, silky rice and house-ripened mango did little to quell that fire. And like a jilted lover already burned before by passion, so too do I know that I'll be back here, eager to test Jitlada's flame.