It seems to be feast or famine at Bangkok Spoon.

Monday night. One man comes in for dinner and one for takeout. Otherwise, we pretty much have the lonely waiter to ourselves.

Thursday noon. A large party is ordering, and several other tables are occupied. By 12:30 p.m., Bangkok Spoon is turning people away. Two servers scurry around, trying to greet people at the door, take orders and get the food out. Dishes arrive in fits and starts, but hot.

Lunch is a very good deal. You can also get dinner appetizers and entrees, but why bother? The $7.95 lunch specials include soup, spring roll, rice or noodles, and many choices of entrees. As at dinner, you can designate your own spice level. My bounteous pork Pad Thai featured tender pork, hot noodles and cold, crisp bean sprouts, a cup of light chicken soup, and a refreshingly homespun spring roll.

At dinner, we started off on the wrong appetizer. This beef satay ($7.25), marinated and grilled, could be called jerky in some countries. For dipping, and we needed desperately to dip, there was a sweet/salty peanut sauce and a tangy/spicy cucumber vinaigrette salad. The same sauces accompany roti ($5.95). Bangkok Spoon's roti are not wispy and flaky pancakes but thick and deep-fried, addictive in their own, doughnut-like way.

On the healthier side, the sweet/tart papaya salad ($7.95) perked up our taste buds with a shrimp, tomatoes and cashews dotting a citrus-dressed slaw of crisp green papaya and green beans. Bangkok Spoon has lots of vegetarian items, and brown rice is an option.

Basil duck ($10.95) was very good. Slices of roasted duck and fresh mushroom were sauteed with onions, basil and chili. It could have been spicier, but that was our fault. In green curry chicken ($8.25), the meat was overcooked but not the eggplant.

For a sweet ending, share the Crazy Mango dessert ($6.50) with at least one other person. Ripe, juicy mangoes top coconut ice cream and sticky rice. There's also a roti dessert: fried dough, fried banana and coconut ice cream ($5.50).

Bangkok Spoon has three food-friendly beers: Heineken ($3.75), and in addition to the usual Singha ($3.95) from Thailand they serve Chang ($3.95).

The wine selection could be worse. Robert Mondavi wines are listed as Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Merlot ($4.25 glass, $16 bottle). The Sauvignon is Cabernet, not Blanc. Just so you know. (Note to Bangkok Spoon: Sauvignon Blanc would be better than Cabernet with food that is distinctive for its contrasting flavors of salt, sour, spice and sweet.)

Besides the Cabernet, the background music also doesn't go with the food. "Listen to the music of the falling rain. Pitter patter, pitter patter." And the ghost of Karen Carpenter: "Every sha la la la, every whoa whoa whoa." Another plus for lunch is that the music is less noticeable.

I had heard that Bangkok Spoon, under the same ownership since 1980, was the first Thai restaurant in Silicon Valley. The local history room at the Mountain View Public Library could confirm only that it existed in the '80s, and before that the little restaurant at the corner of Villa and Hope streets was Peking Duck.

The carpet, held together in spots with tape, could be original. Peachy tablecloths brighten the dim 60-seat room, bounded by wood paneling. You have only to look at the tabletop, though, to see why so many Thai restaurants in the United States have spoon or spoons in their name: You use a spoon and a fork.

Mountain View seems to have been a decade behind Los Angeles in attracting Thai cuisine, which was considered exotic at the time. Lynne Olver, a reference librarian at the Morris County Library (Whippany, N.J.) runs the informative and entertaining www.foodtimeline.org. She found reviews of Thai restaurants in Los Angeles newspapers in 1971. "An influx of Thai students may have been the impetus," Olver told me in an e-mail.