Sometimes the best things are hidden in the least likely places. This is often true of restaurants in Milwaukee. Think of Bombay Sweets on 13th Street or the string of fine Chinese restaurants in the strip mall at 76th and Rawson in Franklin.

Bangkok House is another strip mall gem -- a Thai restaurant to rival the old stand-bys; located just minutes from downtown below the contrails of jets landing and taking off from Mitchell International Airport.

If you clear your mind of the image of the exterior, once inside, you'd hardly know you were in a strip mall. Its sparkling clean interior, polished wood details, bamboo placemats and a range of Thai decorative elements warm up the space, as does the invariably hearty and friendly welcome from the staff upon your arrival.

I've visited a few times in the past year and have never been disappointed. The menu is well-stocked with 14 appetizers, six soups (plus some variations), four noodle dishes, six rice dishes, a half dozen vegetarian options and more than 30 entrees, half of which are seafood-based.

The vegetable spring rolls ($2.95) are some of the best in the city -- two to a plate -- stuffed with bean sprouts and clear noodles and deep-fried to a brown crispiness without the excessive oil. The Tom Kha soup with chicken ($2.50) was a scrumptious creamy coconut milk and limejuice broth with large pieces of tender white-meat chicken and a variety of mushrooms. If you've never tried this Thai soup, you're really missing out. The sweet coconut milk, tangy lime juice and earthy straw and button mushrooms meld to create a delectable flavor.

For the main course, their chicken Pud Thai ($8.95) is a favorite. Anyone who has ever eaten at a Thai restaurant needs no introduction to this dish, one of the cuisine's most famous. Rice noodles are sautéed with peanuts, eggs, tamarind sauce and the main ingredient of choice, usually chicken, shrimp, pork or beef, served with crunchy bean sprouts. The noodles were uniformly tender and a blend that was not too hot for the one-star rating requested. An ample dose of peanuts gave the dish a nice nutty flavor and the chicken, as in the soup, was flavorful without a hint of rubber texture.

The Volcano Shrimp ($14.95) is prized as much for its taste as its dramatic presentation tableside, when the server pours the spicy, sweet/sour "lava" sauce onto a hot Ponderosa-style metal plate creating a crackling frenzy on the plate that finishes steaming the meal. The dish had a dozen butterflied shrimp that were stir-fried to perfection, along with carrot circles and green leafy vegetables topped with the sauce which comprises pepper, curry paste and fish sauce, with coconut milk and honey for the sweet kick. It was served with Jasmine rice. The only negative here was that some of the greens had gotten too close to a flame and were scorched.

The service was friendly and efficient (even doting and deferential) without being too hurried so we could relax; the bathrooms could easily make Molly Snyder Edler's list of cleanest in the city.

Dinner is served Tuesday-Friday, 2:30-9 p.m.; Saturday, noon-10 p.m.; and Sunday, 4-9 p.m. There are nearly 50 items on the lunch menu, too, including a well-stocked buffet, available Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

Bangkok House is just off Layton Avenue. Hop on the Lake Parkway, stay on it until the end and just east, in the Whitnall Square (Pick 'n' Save) Shopping Center, 4698 S. Whitnall Ave. Call (414) 482-9838 for more information. Fax your orders to (414) 483-6702. Visit the restaurant -- and learn some useful Thai phrases -- on line at www.bangkokhouserestaurant.com.