Vila Thai Cuisine is no ordinary University Boulevard café. It sits alone,literally, atop a sea of casual fast-food places, bars and smaller ethnic nooks and is actually a gourmet sit-down restaurant worthy of anything downtown or on Fourth Avenue.

Hidden away from the busy street below, the modest but upscale Thai restaurant is nestled upstairs above The Fat Greek, next to Oriental Express .

Vila is cleanand cozy – but was empty the evening we ate out. Given, we did step in around 5 p.m. Once the dinner hours hit, the quiet, chic atmosphere – accompanied with dim lighting and casual jazzy, trip-hop music – became a bustling weekend hotspot.

We were promptly seated by a friendly waitress and given advice about what food would appeal to our tastes. She immediately brought over two Thai iced-teas ($2), a milky tea similar to Chai but with much more sugar.

The simple chicken fried rice ($7.25) was filling, though a bit too spicy at times. It seemed that the spices weren’t fully
dispersed throughout the food, which was jolting when the rice was hot. The ingredients were fresh, and the snow peas were a nice addition to the rice.

Because we ordered the yellow chicken curry ($8.25) medium-spicy, the sweet coconut milk, punched up with a tangy pepper, was just enough to add flavor but fell just short of kicking us in the butt. This made the dish enjoyable to eat, because our uninjured tongues could taste all the complementing flavors in the creamy sauce.

The dish contained all the traditional yellow curry ingredients, including potatoes, carrots and chicken. Although the meat and sauce blended together very well, the potato was a tad undercooked and hard to bite into – an imperfection in an otherwise flawless ensemble.

For dessert, we had the mango with sticky rice ($4), which was reminiscent of fruity oatmeal. The rice was a bit creamier than we were used to, and it seemed almost more like pudding than grains. We occasionally dipped the mangoes in the rice pudding, combining the fresh, juicy taste of the fruit with the creamy coconut taste of the rice.

Vila Thai Cuisine, 972 E. University Blvd., is open Monday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. For more information, visit www.vilathai.com