Tamarind Thai Restaurant slipped quietly into North Beach over the summer with no press releases or media parties to announce the arrival of a true international talent. (Thank you, Mike, the loyal reader who tipped me off via e-mail.)

Bangkok-born chef/co-owner Vatcharin Bhumichitr founded some of London's earliest and most acclaimed Thai restaurants, including the popular Southeast W9, and has six Asian cookbooks to his credit.

He and longtime friend Day Longsomboon transformed the former Marcella's Italian Cafe with white tableclothes, fresh flowers and Bhumichitr's bold silk-screen prints (he's a visual artist, too), and then hired a staff of young servers who are as friendly as they are professional and knowledgeable.

Most notably, they devised an extensive, authentic and reasonably priced menu that includes dishes seldom seen in South Florida.

One stellar example is laap gai, a starter of rich ground chicken seasoned with fish sauce, lemon grass, shallots, chiles, lime and an unmistakeable trace of ground, roasted rice that gives the dish an earthy depth you're unlikely to find outside of Bangkok or Los Angeles.

We were also thrilled with the bright and summery green papaya salad loaded with chiles and roasted peanuts over crisp iceberg lettuce and the cigar-sized spring rolls filled with cabbage, clear noodles, Chinese mushrooms, celery and carrot -- perfect dunked in a sweet, mild, house-made chili sauce.

Don't forget an order of roti, a pair of hot, flaky, flat-bread disks perfect for scooping up the luscious finger food.

Deep-fried corn and prawn cakes were disappointingly skinny (more like crackers), though once we started dunking them in the sweet, house-made plum sauce we polished them off without complaint.

In fact, our only real gripe was the sometimes-vague menu descriptions. A patient non-Thai waiter was helpful, though we should have asked more questions.

One thing is certain: Duck lovers must not miss the sweetly sour tamarind version here, which has the moistest flesh and crispiest skin I have ever sampled. A colorful mélange of cabbage, red peppers, onions, carrots and snow peas balances the unctuous meat. The sublime, signature tamarind sauce is also served with excellent appetizers of noodles and skewered pork, and deserves even wider use.

An order of vegetable red curry brought an impressive mix of bamboo shoots, bell pepper, cabbage, cauliflower and mushrooms in a silky coconut milk sauce. A more generic pad Thai was improved once we requested a tray of typical Thai condiments (sugar, fish sauce, sweet chili sauce, dried chili flakes). Be sure to ask for one, too.

Desserts include tropical gelati made next door at Dolce Vita. We chose the house-made Thai custard, a grainy but delicious coconut treat.

The wine list is unremarkable, though we were perfectly satisfied with our $27 screw-top bottle of Mills Reef Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. There are also sakes and imported beers including Sapporo and Singha.

Here's hoping Tamarind resists the lure of sushi bars and Americanized dishes that have turned so many South Florida Thai restaurants into boring hybrids. If Bhumichitr and company hold true to their desire to cook authentic, country-style Thai cuisine, I, for one, will come back again and again.