Dining out: Sapa

I felt a sense of approval as soon as I stepped into Sapa, an Asian fusion restaurant that has set up beautiful shop on a corner of downtown State Street.

The light fixtures in this gorgeous restaurant are clusters of dizzy red spirals that evoke sculptor Dale Chihuly's fabulous installations in Abravanel Hall — and that's just one aspect of the design.

There were different vistas everywhere — a wall of metal lotus flowers, a plumply upholstered wall, dining space divided into intimate little niches. Heck, even the bathrooms are unusual and attractive. And I haven't even mentioned the courtyard, surrounded by lushly carved, traditional little Thai houses, with an angular stone water feature in the middle.

This is the loveliest place in which I've had a meal in a long time, and it poses a challenge for Sapa's chefs: producing food that lives up to these surroundings.

The cuisine hasn't reached that dazzling height quite yet, but my recent lunch there was promising.

Because it was, well, lunch, we had lunch specials, which included soup, salad, California rolls, crispy rolls and an entree. That's a lot of food, but I couldn't resist trying the yellowtail carpaccio appetizer.

Yellowtail is one of my favorites, and Sapa's was fresh and supple, resting on a shallow pool of vinaigrette-like honey mustard sauce with a crunchy slice of jalapeno on top, with shreds of white onion and carrot piled in the middle for extra flavor and texture.

The miso soup arrived next, cloudy and sour in the way that good miso should be, with slices of fresh mushroom, tiny cubes of tofu, big sheets of seaweed and a sprinkling of green onion.

Our lunches were prettily served in deep bento boxes. My husband had the filet mignon, cut into chunks, seasoned and seared with butter and onions. In the other sections, he had sticky rice, salad of fresh green-leaf lettuce in a creamy, just-spicy dressing and the rolls.

The California rolls weren't the best I've had; just a little too goopy inside, so that the creaminess of the avocado was lost. The compact crispy rolls were wonderful, filled with crab, shrimp and vegetables and deep-fried.

I had all the same stuff, with the exception of my salmon panang entree, a nicely browned, skin-on slab of salmon resting half in, half out of a pool of rosy, silky panang curry with a touch of heat and a smooth finish.

Our little boy skipped the bentos and dived into a big bowl of chicken yakisoba, wheat noodles stir-fried with cabbage, onions and sesame seeds in a sweet sauce.