HOKKA! With this inscrutable proclamation, the Pan-Asian dining experience Matahari welcomes you to its jasmine-scented lair. Actually... that exclamation is the remnants of the old Hokkaido sign, a luminous sushi phantasm haunting the space now occupied by Matahari. Such ghosts are not uncommon on Edmonton’s restaurant scene, but it doesn’t seem to augur well for a restaurant to throw open its doors before the body of the previous tenant is completely cold.

I should mention at this point that I made up the jasmine-scented lair bit. Clearly Matahari is striving for a polyglot exoticism with its diversely Asian menu–comprising Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese and "fusion" comestibles–but jasmine incense is not part of this enterprise. The koi pond, black lacquered wood, statuary, and big honkin’ wooden boat fulla booths moored along the southern wall take care of ambiance just fine.

And really, isn’t it all about the food, anyway? (More precisely, it’s about food and beer–Matahari serves fine Asian imports like Tiger, Singha, Saigon and Tsingtao for $4.25 a bottle, which is cheaper than most places would let them go for. Incipient alcoholism aside, I only mention it because the clean, lightly hopped lagers of the Far East are just the thing for slaking the burn of sambals, srirachas, curries, lemongrasses and other nose-watering alimentary delights.)

So sprawling was the reach of Matahari’s menu that I had to go twice to take even part of it in. My first sojourn was in trio–with meat-eaters, as fate would have it. After calling for a round of Singhas, we negotiated a shared feast with the help of the server, who endorsed the orange pork ($8.75–have I yet mentioned that Matahari is incredibly reasonable price-wise, with most of the menu coming in under $10 per item and appetizers under $5?). We added pad thai ($9.95 with shrimp and chicken) and red curry beef ($8.95) to our list of entrees, then requested some roti canai ($2.95), Thai curry puffs with beef ($3.95) and satay pork for appetizers, thus pillaging multiple feifdoms of the animal kingdom for our meal.

Multi-culti mealtime

Roti canai is a Malaysian flatbread that pulls apart into steamy, flaky folds before being plunged into creamy curry sauce. Matahari’s version was long on crispy, short on flaky and a little chintzy on curry sauce, but still delicious. Later we would discover they put the roti to even better use. The curry puffs were round, crisp pastries filled with lightly curried beef and a sweet tamarind sauce on the side. The satay skewers, which I liked so much that I forgot how much they cost, were three tender little porksicles smothered in peanut-y sauce with cucumbers on the side. So far, so good.

Like the appies, the mains were appealingly plated and offered to the eye a lot of colour. The pad thai was mounded on a white platter shaped like a leaf, with wide rice noodles, pink shrimp, tawny chicken and pale sprouts wound round one another. The curried beef swam in a pool of creamy reddish sauce teeming with carrots, broccoli, peppers and onions beside a small Aztec pyramid of jasmine rice. The orange pork had a similar altar of grains and was festooned with orange slices and a scatter of green onions. For a place that covered such a motley epicure, Matahari handled the peculiarities of each dish extremely well. The red curry beef, with a serious snap of spiciness, had my vote for the most delectable of the dishes, but the rest of the table sided heavily with the robust pad thai.

Sweet potato dictatorship

Visit number 2, a scant 10 days later, afforded occasion to try out the gado-gado ($6.95 for a large), the mango salad rolls ($3.95), and the Burmese pork curry ($8.75). My traveling companion, who goes by the moniker Slim these days, bade kitchen whip up a red curry tofu for the occasion.

Gado-gado is an Indonesian salad with sprouts, hardboiled egg, sprouts, onions, sprouts, potatoes and fried tofu in a peanut sauce. Matahari’s version was okay by me, but lacking a little in the zip department. The mango rolls were a nice idea–organic greens and fresh mango spears with red pepper and red onion in a rice wrapper, hoisin on the side–but wanted for a bit of heft.

It was all riding on the Burmese pork curry now. The pork was immured in a thick brown spice paste, tossed with cubes of tender sweet potato and sided with steamed broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, and an angular geodesic dome of seasoned rice. Poor old Burma doesn’t get much good press these days, now that it’s called Myanmar and run by a dictatorial military government, and this may account for why I’ve never had Burmese food before. The spice paste was rich with ginger, garlic and quite probably shrimp paste, and the pork it enfolded was moist, with the sweet potato cubes a nice variant on the overall savouriness of the dish. I would have liked it a little saucier, but that’s just being picky. Delving into the rice disinterred whole cloves and a fragrant cardamom pod, as well as cubes of carrot and potato. There was no way I was leaving the table hungry. Raffish Slim made short work of the red curry tofu nearby.

Dast we proceed to dessert? Oh, we dast. Because how can you say no to roti canai stuffed with bananas and topped with strawberry syrup and coconut ice cream ($5.50)? You can’t, that’s how. Coconut ice cream on its own may be the definitive proof of intelligent design, but throw in the crispy, frangible folds of roti canai and macerated fruit and you’re ready to convert nations.

In all, my Matahari experience was pleasing enough to encourage repeat visits. And so I welcome the venerable Matahari to Edmonton’s food scene with a hearty HOKKA! I’m sure Slim would agree.