Mai Thai Cuisine

Lundy's Lane is tourist-strip territory, a Niagara Falls commercial run lined with the high-traffic, crowd-pleasing dining a visitor district tends to attract. Mai Thai Cuisine sits on that strip and works in the opposite register: a long, plainly Thai menu aimed at people who already know what they want from a Thai kitchen, and broad enough to settle a table that can't agree. The range is the whole proposition — noodles, coconut curries, stir-fries, soups, salads, whole fish, and a handful of desserts, all ordered across one table without anyone reaching outside the cuisine.

Pad Thai is the first order, and the version here holds to the classic build: rice noodles stir-fried with chicken or shrimp, beansprouts, green onion, tamarind sauce, and crushed peanuts. The kitchen doesn't stop at the standard, though. Curry Pad Thai swaps the tamarind for a creamy red curry; the crispy noodles arrive under a Raad Nah gravy with broccoli and peppers; drunken noodles and the basil-sauce spicy noodles round out the lineup. From there the curries take over. Panang is the richest of them, a coconut-and-peanut curry thickened around bamboo shoots, carrots, and green beans, while the green curry runs lighter and sharper over the same coconut base. Most plates can be dialled from mild to Thai-hot on request.