The base is an intense fish soup, flavoured with tamarind, ginger flower, galangal, pungent belacan prawn paste, refreshing sprigs of mint and sliced shallots.
Standout appetizers included an appealingly fragile pan-fried crab cake with a sweet roasted red pepper rémoulade; a composition of roasted red and golden beets with goat cheese and a balsamic-chive drizzle; and an intense mushroom soup with a base of chicken stock enriched and brimming with roasted wild mushrooms and a touch of cream.
Caldo verde, an intense, smoky soup with strips of kale, potato and slices of linguica, the Portuguese sausage, is a delicious appetizer, as is linguica frita, a big plate of sausage cut into small rounds and fried until just crisp around the edges.
One day, Koko produced an intense lamb soup enriched with butter and egg yolks, adding lemon for balance and drizzling red pepper oil on top.
And what arrived was very fine indeed: a spectacularly light but also intense carrot-lemongrass soup, an English pea soup with Parmesan flan and hunks of lobster, a delicate vegetarian spring roll and a duck burger so rich I couldn't finish it.
It is easy to go overboard with the small plates here, especially those like the intense ripe tomato soup brightened with kaffir lime -- a terrific flavor combination -- served with squash blossoms stuffed with paneer (a firmly pressed Indian fresh cheese).
The menu has plenty of other good choices, like creamy roasted butternut squash soup ($4.95); intense, concentrated onion soup ($4.95), its sweetness sharpened by toasted almonds, and mussels steamed in white wine and garlic ($8.95).
Fragrant lemon grass spiked tom yum goog (here with whole shrimp), an intense hot-and-sour soup.
They give the soup an intense sweetness: in fact, I think Keller's soup is a little too sweet – there's no oniony bite there.
I had an intense bowl of wonton soup for lunch with spicy prawns and peanut chicken.
The noodle soup's intense beefy broth with a touch of garlicky sweetness becomes more compelling the more of it you eat.
