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Opened by chef Daniel Wu, veteran of the West Village's popular Café Asean, Mai is a boon for the Asian-food-aficionados of Boerum Hill. With its upscale, affordable menu, wall of exposed brick hung with mirrors, and a spacious garden out back, Mai possesses all the physical prerequisites for a successful Brooklyn restaurant. Better still, the food at Mai, drawn from South East Asia, is quite good. Seafood dishes like squid stuffed with shrimp, mushrooms, and glass noodles gets zip from a streak of tart tamarind sauce; briny, delicate scallop dumplings come with an extraordinarily vibrant, lime-spiked soy-ginger sauce. Mee goreng, a savory heap of egg noodles, tofu, and shrimp, should oust the default (and often saccharine) pad Thai from its exalted place. Despite intriguing ingredients, Thai red curry with short ribs and pumpkin is ho-hum. Stick with seafood: Sea bass steamed with ginger in a banana leaf is heavenly dunked into its intensely aromatic dipping sauce featuring calamondi, a tart fruit popular in Southeast Asia that smells of tangerine peel. — JJ Goode

Muc nuong, $6.50; wo teet, $6.25; mee goreng, $9.25; ca nuong, $9.50