I never go to Linden Hills.

For those of you who don't live in the Twin Cities, allow me to state outright that this is very odd. The Linden Hills neighborhood is about 15 blocks south and ten blocks east of me, and until tonight, in all the time I've lived where I do now, I'd never gone there. I go to suburbs farther out on a regular basis. I go to city neighborhoods farther away on a regular basis. So tonight, I decided I wanted to go to Linden Hills.

I pulled Urbanspoon up in my iPod, looked at a couple of menus online, and settled on Rice Paper, an Asian fusion restaurant settled firmly in Southeast Asia, mainly Thai and Vietnamese. As a result, I will be going back to Linden Hills. Oh yes, I will.

I will be back even though the parking in Linden Hills suuuuuuuuucks and the actual restaurant is more dimly lit than I'd prefer. But that's because my contrast vision is shit and I need a certain number of lumens to read a menu. And I need more lumens to read it if it's printed in black on green, in a handwriting font, and laminated. Oh, and there's no Wi-Fi. And I don't care.

An appetizer was ordered. Grilled vegetable dumplings. And when they say grilled, they are not fucking around. A tender wonton wrapper flaking with bits of char, enclosing a vegetable filling that I couldn't identify, but probably had mushrooms in it, because it was earthy and savory and not bland in the way vegetable dumplings can be. It came with a vinegar/sweet-chili dipping sauce that was fairly typical, but nice and bright.

A quick note on the menu, by the way. If you don't eat meat, your options are nigh-endless. Virtually any dish can be made with tofu, and there are a number of dishes designed specifically around tofu, In fact, your options shrink a lot faster if you don't eat -peanuts-, which is an inevitable consequence of these cuisines.

I settled on the Mekong Encounter, which as described was a basic Thai-style red curry with chicken, snow peas, red bell pepper, and asparagus. A few bites in, though, and I noticed something. Every single one of those ingredients tasted better than I expected. The bell pepper was super-sweet. The snow peas were super-fresh. The asparagus was sliced thinly, cooked perfectly, and delicious. Even the chicken, the official generic protein of Midwestern Asian cuisine, tasted like really good chicken. The curry sauce was mild, but it was the stuff they put in it that shone.

Bonus points for the arty squiggle of chili paste on one side of the plate that I used to up the heat level, and the weird little puffed rice crackers that came with the dish. The only complaint was that there were about three bites of the rice that had clumped together, ending up a bit overcooked, mushy and bland. But the rest of the dish got better with every single bite.

I also got to try some of the Tamarind Rice Trio, which had more of that excellent chicken, in a nicely balanced, not-too-sour tamarind sauce, along with coconut rice, scallion rice, and peanut rice. One of the things they seem to do at Rice Paper is small mounds of flavored rice, instead of one big pile of plain rice. So the coconut rice has coconut milk in it and toasted coconut on top of it. The scallion rice has scallion oil through it and fried scallion on top. It's very nice.

Prices are fairly reasonable - entrees are all $12-$20. Careful diners can get out under $20/head, $25 if you're not careful, and probably $30 if you drink. But it's all there on the plate. I'm used to the Asian restaurants here using fairly standard ingredients, and I then rate them on their seasoning, sauces, and execution. Rice Paper lets their superior ingredients shine, and the result is happy-making, indeed.