Issaquah may seem like an unnecessary schlep when within the city limits the ratio of Seattleites to Thai restaurants has to be about 5:1. But make no mistake: that extra 15 or 20 minutes in the car is the only reason Noodle Boat isn’t on everyone’s top-10 lists.

The food here is authentic: there’s a grandma in the kitchen. Instead of settling on reasonable facsimiles of ingredients, the family makes a year’s worth of chili paste during annual trips home to Thailand. The little details that fall by the wayside in high-turnover Thai joints are never overlooked; mieng kum, for instance—a must-order appetizer—comes with traditional cha plu leaves instead of the spinach leaves often substituted. On the spice scale, four stars might actually approximate “Thai spicy,” and asking for anything above that will have you sweating like a BP shareholder.

Noodle Boat is nothing fancy, but it’s hardly a hole in the wall. Presentations are beautiful and sometimes a little whimsical: pumpkin curry comes in a ceramic pumpkin, and the menus, in bound books with 3D elephants on the covers, make you feel like you’re about to read a wonderful fairytale about a princess who has her mouth seared out by a sadistic Thai cook, and then falls into a wonderful food coma.