Silk flowers on the tables, bamboo matting on the walls and the old Taniguchi's Place has been transformed into a Thai restaurant. Maleewan Thai & Sushi is still tiny, with about a dozen tables and a few stools around the sushi bar, but the look is cleaner and more inviting.

The food is typical of the new Thai-Japanese hybrids; authentic or not, it satisfies a yen for things from the East. The sushi menu is limited but competent and super fresh, and the chef will accommodate special orders such as brown rice in rolls.

The rest of the menu was uneven. The mermaid soup -- miso with crab sticks and bits of seaweed and tofu -- was a hit with my 4-year-old. The tom yum goong soup, though a little thin, was satisfying with three snappy shrimp, a few baby straw mushrooms, scallion, bits of lemon grass and a nice hit of chile. The yum seafood salad with squid tendrils, shrimp and white fish was generously spiced with lime juice, scallions, onions and lots of red chile over iceberg lettuce.

Fried wontons were overdone, the shrimp filing oddly pasty and the coating greasy. In contrast, the spring roll was fresh, light and perfectly golden, but on another visit it was charred on the outside and cold inside.

During a particularly bad lunch, the red curry beef took nearly 40 minutes to arrive. The waiter said the cook had ruined the first attempt and started over, but the second couldn't have been much better, the watery coconut broth tasteless and the stringy strips of beef too chewy.

Basil chicken, a simple combination of sautéed onions, bell peppers and bits of white chicken meat was fine though a bit heavy on the bottled chili sauce. Pad Thai was quite well executed, the soft, slippery noodles bathed in a mildly sweet sauce with a choice of beef, pork, chicken, shrimp or vegetables.

For affordable, fresh standards and vegetarian options, this pleasant newcomer may not wow but it will suffice. Especially for lunch specials priced from $6.95.