Is there any restaurant in Phoenix that has altered the public's perception of an international cuisine as suddenly and drastically as Lom Wong? Perhaps Barrio Café, when it opened diners' eyes to a world of regional Mexican cuisine. But transformative restaurants like this are rare, and they deserve to be celebrated as such. Yotaka and Alex Martin continue to refine their microregional Thai fare, taking suspicious customers accustomed to Bangkok-style food on a ride through both Chiang Rai and the Moklen villages of southern Thailand, introducing them to dishes like boo pad pong garee, stir-fried crab with slivers of sweet onion in a turmeric-rich curry; and yam hua plee, a sweet and pungent banana blossom salad dressed with freshly squeezed coconut milk and an abundance of toasted coconut. For those raised on Americanized Thai fare, a visit to Lom Wong can be like seeing the world in color for the first time — a bit shocking and unfamiliar at first but bursting with new experiences that can be absorbed only with wide-eyed wonder.