When we were kids, Chinese food was still exotic. On Fridays when Pops was too exhausted to cook, gingery hot pots of corn-starchy chicken convinced us that there was something special about the weekend besides God resting and no school. Then we grew up.

But just as we were realizing how bad that Chinese food was for us, we discovered Thai food. Suddenly everything was new again and we couldn't stop packing our mouths with Thai's signature balance of hot, sweet, spicy, bitter and sour. Mango was the new parsley, we had to be reminded not to use chopsticks, and a young war named Iraq had yet to be trivialized by a sequel. Over the past decade the strip of Yonge just south of Bloor, former home of the Uptown Theatre, Druxy's, the Misty Mug and another half-dozen scumbag bars, became the Thai restaurant district. Secretaries and bike couriers descend on the block at lunch hour to pick up sugary mounds of gelatinous noodles topped with peanuts and mango.

Wandee Young has been here through it all. Born in Phuket and raised in Bangkok, Young has been serving Thai cuisine to Toronto for 30 years. The Thai takeout glut saw the downfall of her mini-consortium, a trio of respected and popular Young Thailand restaurants (on Gerrard, Church, and John). She's recently reopened in the hot neighbourhood of the Junction. Contrary to popular belief, the Junction really does exist. North of Roncesvalles, the winding road of Dundas West renders into a wilderness of windowless factories and abandoned storefronts. Follow this road a spell and you'll come across a collection of old-brick shops, services and mid-20th century homes, more foreign legion outpost than neighbourhood. But the Junction is not Shangri-La or Narnia or Metropolis. Talked up for its recently lifted prohibition (seven years ago is recent for a law that had been on the books since 1904), it's just Keele and Dundas. So let's put a stop to that rumour right now.

Young has never pandered to steam-table drudgery. Her longevity is due to a gargantuan menu of Thai staples that is characterized by liberal fistfuls of vibrant yellows and greens, in almost every dish, the perfume of fruit mingling with the sting of chilies. A generous heap of tart green mango salad ($8.95) is strewn with shreds of limey chicken and toasted cashews. As a testament to Asian menu redundancy, it bears an almost identical description to the young mango chicken ($11.95), a slightly gluey, sweet stew of cubed mango and chicken. As part of our wickedly unhealthy start, crunchy wedges of tofu arrive next to little peppery taro root cakes and a thin citrus-coriander sauce that dribbles off our chins ($6.95).

The server does her shy best to improvise an explanation of the drunken noodles ($10.95): “they're drunk with flavour?” The noodles turn out to be a fat mass, sort of like rice noodle pappardelle, steeped in sizzling chili sauce and almost flowering with hand-torn scraps of thai basil (or horapa, which is in the same family as basil but with a stronger whiff of anise). The super-spicy forkfuls of noodles drop like lead in the stomach. Lamb Pad Ped ($11.95) leads by a snout with soft threads of lamb immersed in a sweet roasted-pepper sauce classed up with fresh green peppercorns that we end up nibbling off the vine.

A half-dozen dishes, each one brimming with the five tastes (six if you count umami) can be overwhelming. The heat dulls the senses and releases endorphins at the behest of our pain receptors. It's easy at this point for the subtlety of specific flavours to be trampled in the barrage of ubiquitous fish sauce, coconut milk, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves. Fortunately, the sweet starchiness of pumpkin is more prevalent as a doggie-bag breakfast the next morning without a table full of intense distractions from the red curry pork ($10.95). The chunks of promised pumpkin, too, can be excavated underneath a spicy tomb of fiery sauce and chewy pork strips.

Young has stayed the course. Her semi-eponymous restaurants have outlasted Thai cuisine as both a fad and a utilitarian go-to to-go food. If real estate analysts are to be believed, the restaurant is at the epicentre of Toronto's newest hot spot. If perception is a better meter of reality, it's like the UN moving to Newark.

* PRICE INCLUDES APPETIZERS, ENTREES, DESSERT AND WINE AND TAXES AND TIP