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Albuquerque restaurants are certainly not short on charm.

We've got establishments full of character — and characters — and aesthetics. In this city, owners are genuinely appreciative of your patronage. The chefs will do that little extra something to make sure your meal is perfect.

Say what you want about this laid-back town, but these are virtues I hope the Duke City never loses and that its people don't take for granted.

And these are virtues completely manifest in Tawan Thai Cuisine, a tiny restaurant at Wyoming Boulevard and Zuni Road Northeast.

Tawan Thai has, maybe, eight tables — about half of which seat two.

Guests are quickly seated and offered a drink. Orders are taken quickly. Meals are served quickly.

But the whole process is flawless.

A friend and I, on our first visit, ordered the Golden Bag appetizer (fried wontons stuffed with crab meat, cilantro and cream cheese, $5.95). The dish — fairly standard fare at many Asian restaurants — comes with six wontons, beautifully presented alongside a dish of sweet dipping sauce.

But they are far above the standard.

They were polished off within minutes.

Days after that first visit, we knew we wanted more. It hadn't been much more than a week, but we both had been quietly craving the appetizer.

We were delighted, then, on our next visit to have accidentally been served seven wontons. (We had more fantastic food on the way, and we'll talk more about that later.)

Minutes later, it wasn't enough. We asked for a second order of Golden Bags. Our waitress smiled when she brought out the second order.

"The chef," she said, "wanted you to have more."

There were 10 on the plate.

Charming.

The Golden Bag experience, in taste, was a perfect primer for the dishes to come.

Curry dishes, for example, are lovely, colorful and flavorful. Instead of a jumbled pile of vegetables and rice with a grayish meat mixed in, as can be common at other Asian eateries, our green curry ($7.95 with tofu) was a spicy and interesting array of soft eggplant, bell peppers and basil. A small mound of jasmine rice is served on the side.

We ordered our pad thai with chicken and tofu ($7.95). The noodles are soft but not mushy or particularly sticky, and they are lightly tossed with crushed peanut, egg, sprouts and scallions. The soft tofu, lightly fried, holds its own against the texture and flavors of the noodles and peanuts.

That each vegetable or rice morsel is completely flavorful on its own is a gratifying change from some of those oversauced chains popping up in every neighborhood.

But the biggest surprise was the tom kha, a hot-and-sour soup ($7.95) with moist chicken (or tofu, by request), thick mushroom slices, coconut milk, lime juice and the spicy root galanga.

It arrives steaming mysteriously in a tall metal pot. The coconut flavor is more subtle than expected and the lime juice provides a pleasant tang.

When the waitress sets it before us, she smiles and places next to the burly bowl a dainty pink ladle.

"Chef wants to know how you like it so far," she says.

Charming.