Em Thai: Mmm Mmm Good?

So there's this new club on Smith Street--white walls, futuristic white seating, crazy red branches creeping up the wall--O wait, that's Em, the new Smith Street Thai restaurant, my bad. But it wouldn't be a horrible club if only they hadn't played Dirty Vegas' "Days Go By" (aka that Mitsubishi commercial song) twice. But on to the food. As I mentioned before, the menu is extensive and fairly creative for a Thai place in this neighborhood, with a notable number of duck dishes. We started with a spicy squid salad ($6), which was served on iceberg lettuce, which seems to be a habit here. The sauce was a pleasing mix of lemongrass, lime, mint, chili, but I thought the squid tasted too much of the freezer. Both of the mains we tried were from the Em Special section of the menu, and both were deserving of their "special" moniker.  In particular, the Duck Thai Herbal ($14) had a complex flavor that tasted most heavily of lemongrass, though it was a tad salty and also served on a bed of lettuce (who eats this lettuce at the bottom of a dish). We also tried the Chiang Mai Noodle ($9), mainly because I'm a sucker for a good noodle dish. The dish's fried egg noodles sit atop the mound of meat (chicken) and veggies (potatoes, pickled cabbage), which lounge in a pool of yellow curry.  I would order it again simply for the novelty of the noodles and pickled cabbage, though I would have enjoyed a healthier dose of the cabbage. If Em can keep the quality up on the more expensive dishes and manage to switch out the music in its CD player, I think we have a Smith Street contender. Plus, it's BYOB!