Vivid, Authentic Bites of Bangkok : From soothing chicken rice to hot and feisty dried fish and leaves, tiny Sermmith on Melrose captures the flavor of Thailand.

Sermmith is a very small, very authentic Thai restaurant on Melrose Avenue. Not the hip West Hollywood stretch of Melrose, mind you, but Melrose east of Western Avenue, at the southern fringe of Hollywood’s Thai enclave. It doesn’t serve wimpy Thai restaurant food; instead it features the vividly spiced dishes, full of unusual ingredients, that Thais really eat, and at great prices.

One evening I asked Thai friends to do the ordering, and we started with one of Thailand’s most beloved dishes, nam prik pla too. Pla too is a small mackerel from the Gulf of Thailand; nam prik is a heady sauce of shrimp paste, fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, chiles and palm sugar. At Sermmith, the dish is accompanied by sliced cucumbers, fried eggplant and a wedge of raw cabbage.

Our dinner continued with gaeng khua sapparod, a pork and shrimp curry made with coconut milk and lots of pineapple (canned, not fresh). We also had a dish of fried fish cakes with sweet cucumber sauce (thod man pla) and a big bowl of tom yum plakrapong, a plain sour soup full of sea bass, slim Thai chiles and big slices of aromatic galangal (kha).

We ended with khanom pla krim kai tao--literally, fish and turtle eggs. This is a whimsically named dessert of floury squiggles in coconut milk topped off with palm sugar syrup. Strips of pandanus leaf, tied in knots, floated in the coconut milk.

Sermmith makes the usual Thai iced tea and coffee, but instead we drank sweet, fresh palm juice (namtan soot), as mellow as butterscotch. If you want to take some home, it’s sold by the bottle at the Bangkok Market across the street.

Another day, I had lunch at Sermmith with a Thai friend and ran into a dish that neither of us had encountered before, gaeng khi lek. What looked like chopped spinach mixed into the curry turned out to be mild-flavored brined cassia leaves (that’s the khi lek). You could clearly taste the pork and coconut milk, but the dish also had an intriguing, elusive fermented taste, which no one at the restaurant could explain.

Mostly, I go to Sermmith for lunch, a bargain at $3.95 for two dishes plus rice. The lineup of food changes daily; each time I go, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. One Friday, the special was shrimp paste rice served with strips of dark sweet pork, cucumber and a pineapple slice. Another day, emerald-green fried basil leaves cascaded over a pan heaped with fried catfish.

“Very spicy,� I was warned about about green beans with dried fish. In most Thai restaurants, you can ignore this sort of warning; here, it should be taken seriously. The beans turned my mouth into an inferno. I got the same warning about northern Thai gaeng auk, a dish that must have been dreamed up to dispose of leftovers. It mixes a little of a lot of things: pork, chicken, fish balls, bean threads, eggplant, green beans and bamboo shoots. The effect is quite tasty, and the dish is indeed very hot.

And so is the ground beef stir-fried with basil. When I ordered it, I was amazed by the number of chiles I had to pick out of one serving before I could eat it. The beef itself was sweet as well as hot, and very good, but thank heavens for plain rice to offset the chiles; cold drinks don’t help. Sermmith does have a nice way to serve its ice water, though. It’s tinted pale gold with tea.

One of my favorite dishes is green curry made with fish balls instead of meat or chicken. The ground fish paste is tender and soft, a nice contrast to the spicy curry. Garlic pork is chewy and very good when it’s available. Often there are fried bananas to give gently sweet relief from the spicy food.

The chicken larb--ground chicken seasoned with lime juice, fish sauce and chiles--is excellent here. It was still warm from the wok when I had it. And you’re lucky if the day’s dishes include pork salad (yam mu). The strips of meat are laced with lime juice, fish sauce and chiles, then finished off with a dusting of ground roasted rice. It’s a fine dish.

If you can’t handle spicy-hot food, go to Sermmith on Wednesday for the chicken rice. That’s a plate of plain boiled chicken and rice (cooked in broth instead of water), with a bowl of clear broth on the side. The only hot element is a dish of pepper sauce. It’s the Thai version of the chicken rice that is one of Singapore’s best-known dishes.

Sermmith has only a few tables, but a lot of people order the food to go, and there is usually no problem getting a seat. One corner of the restaurant is lined with boxed Thai snacks and sweets. It’s the largest assortment of such goodies that I have seen and worth investigating for very typically Thai tidbits to enjoy at home.

BE THERE

Sermmith Thai restaurant, 4814 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles; (213) 663-7079 or 669-9704. Open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Cash only. Takeout. No alcohol. Park in the lot behind the restaurant or on the street. Dinner for two, food only: $15 to $20. Combination lunch specials: $3.95 for rice plus two dishes; $4.95 for rice plus three dishes.

What to Get: Green curry with fish balls, pork salad, chicken larb, nam prik pla too, chicken rice, ground beef with basil.