Tonight was girls’ night out for me and my friends, as is every Wednesday. Mia, Sandy and I went to this great restaurant, Araya, which just opened a second location in Bellevue. It’s a vegan restaurant, but I’d bet even a hard core meat eater would find multiple dishes to love. I’m comfortable saying that it was the best Thai food I’ve ever had.

The avocado curry was spectacular — something different than I’d ever tasted — with just enough spice in the sauce so that it didn’t overpower the avocado or tofu; the meang khum — betel leaves wrapped around a mixture of toasted coconut, peanut, chili, lime, red onion, cucumber and a sweet sauce — was a taste explosion that I mean to savor again, possibly as an appetizer I won’t share with anyone else. I could tell there was no fish sauce in the pad Thai — and that’s not a bad thing to me. I might order it a little spicier next time, but it compared well to other such dishes I’ve had and liked. I didn’t miss the chicken at all. And the orange tofu was the most stunning dish I’ve ever seen delivered to a table in a Thai restaurant. I want to say it tasted like green and orange, but maybe you won’t get that. It tasted like the foods that together made up the dish. So often I’ll eat something at a restaurant and can’t really tell what’s in it. I like my food to taste like food. This does.

I’m a good cook and can emulate a lot of restaurant food. Making food pretty? I’m not so good at that. But the way that this food was presented is simple and elegant. If I can mimic it — and I’m pretty sure I can — then you can too, Mia. Without the orange slices, which were poached in the orange sauce that covered  the tofu, broccoli, zucchini and carrots, it would have been a pretty dish, but not gorgeous. That the broccoli was not overcooked helped. All that bright orange and green — it was almost a shame to dig into it.

I think one element of the beautiful presentation involves deconstructing the meal — topping the pad Thai noodles separately with the accompanying bean sprouts, peanuts and carrots, for instance, or placing the broccoli around the orange slices, which covered a pile of each of the other elements of the orange tofu. Another part of it is the simple elegance of white serving dishes.

We tried two desserts, the one worth talking about is called Oh My Goodness! It involved chocolate, and also, chocolate. My comment was Oh My God. Dessert is easier to make pretty, even for me. But a little chocolate sauce spread around a plate a la Jackson Pollack? It adds something special. Caramel sauce, pureed raspberries, a little melted apricot jam. If you don’t have a squeeze bottle for it, dip a fork in and make with the sprinkling on the plate. Even the jasmine tea, in a beautiful glass teapot, was pretty to look at.

I don’t usually review restaurants — it’s not my thing — but you can use this as a recommendation to get yourself to one of the Araya restaurants (Seattle and Bellevue). I know I’ll be going back again — probably for their buffet, which is open 7 days a week until 3:30 p.m. and has a rotating selection of menu items included for just $8.99 per person.

The purpose of this post, Mia, is so that you know it’s not hard to make food look pretty on the plate, no matter what I tell you about my lack of skills. Maybe next time we actually cook we can see if we can replicate one of these dishes. Then again, why bother when we could just head out to the restaurant?