No, the local thai mini-empire owned by Bangkok-born chef Tom Silargorn and his wife Oah Budsabagorn won't be opening a fourth Lers Ros location. After all, they've got the Mission, Hayes Valley, and the Tenderloin fully saturated with red curry duck and other delicacies.

Instead, according to some registration sleuthing by Hoodline, the duo will be opening a spinoff called 'The Esan Classic' just doors down from the original Larkin spot at 730 Larkin. The new location, at 739-743 between Olive Alley and O'Farrell Street, has just applied for its beer and wine license.

The new space was formerly home to pizza and Martini joint Olive, which opened in 2004 and shuttered last year when rent became prohibitive. Lers Ros itself opened in that neighborhood in 2008, garnering praise and gaining a faithful following.

Chronicle critic Michael Bauer once remarked that the restaurant "crafts dishes that aren't scaled back heatwise or oversweetened for the American palate." He also quipped that "Silargorn's version of pad Thai... makes others taste like Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal," a confusing comparison as Cap'n Crunch is delicious (although it will destroy your mouth and teeth.)

It's just hungry speculation at this point, but Esan (or Isaan) is a northwestern region of Thailand whose cuisine, Zagat writes, "bears strong resemblance to what's eaten in the bordering countries of Cambodia and Laos." So perhaps at the spinoff we have dishes like sticky rice, larb (minced-meat-and-herb salads) and Som Tum (salad made with shredded green papaya, tomatoes, long beans, garlic, and other veggies), to look forward to.

Quickly becoming the Fuzio of Asian cuisine, Osha Thai according to Eater, will set up shop in the old Bong Su space at Third and Folsom, replacing the greatest-named restaurant in San Francisco that closed earlier this year.

What with an Osha already open for business at Second and Howard, and Ozone Thai taking over Newsom's Jack Falstaff space very soon, one might say Eastern SOMA is turning into the...Thai-light Zone. Eh? Eh? Oh, hush.

You wouldn’t know it from the property values or the chi chi restaurants on Solano Avenue, but Albany has many a cheap option that can accommodate our miserly lifestyle.

Option #1: Albany Bowl , on San Pablo Ave., is one of the last, great bowling alleys around. Of course, the real treat is Monday and Tuesday nights where games cost $1.50 after 9. Yes $1.50. Get there early because lanes fill up fast (or alternatively, just get there late, Albany Bowl is open till 2). But if you have to wait, you can always hit up the bar or the adjoining diner/ coffee shop/ Thai restaurant. Perhaps we did not bowl a perfect game (we strive to bowl with style rather than accuracy), but we enjoy drinking inexpensive beers while wearing neon bowling shoes. Taxes schmaxes.

Option #2: Of course, some days neon shoes are not our thing. In which case, we turn to the Mallard Club. Another great Albany spot along San Pablo Ave. Mallard Club seems to fit three different kinds of bars into one space: the outdoor tiki area; the downstairs with its pool tables and hunting-lodge feel; the upstairs lounge area. Plus they even have Frogger for just a quarter (they used to have Ms. Pac Man, our personal favorite). Maybe we could find cheaper drinks elsewhere, but if we take our one strong drink downstairs, upstairs and outside--- well, it’s sort of like we went to three different bars for the price of one drink. (Geez we sound cheap.)

Option #3: On beautiful days, or when attempts to escape our problems through alcohol fall short, we will go outside to another favorite Albany spot: the Albany Bulb . The Albany Bulb, at the end of Buchanan St., is a former landfill that sticks out into the bay. Now it’s an urban-jungle kind of park. Remnants of the dump remain, turned into all kinds of signs, murals, sculptures, even this strange little plaster house that would’ve been awesome to find back in our fort-building days. There’s enough to explore on the Albany Bulb to keep us coming back long after April 15th passes. (Ok, actually the17th but who’s counting?)

By SFist Jessie

It can get pretty crowded in the cafeteria-style seating area, but on warm weekends it’s nicer to sit outside on the lawn outside of the temple anyway. While the lines to get food can sometimes get a little hectic, it’s smooth sailing after that: You sit outside; you eat your meal; you soak up your Vitamin D before the rain hits on Monday.

Remember to exchange your money for tokens, and then buy your food with the tokens. (We think they make you get tokens for tax purposes). The temple scene is one of those only-in-Berkeley events where old and young hippies roam freely. But the inexpensive meal + picnic is well worth your tokens (did we mention the mango sticky rice?).

Get there on the early side, as the brunch ends by two. For you early-rising city folk, the temple is close to Ashby BART (the corner of Russell and Martin Luther King).

By SFist Jessie

Though the haunted newlyweds at the film's center are just too cute for words, the more saccharine elements in the film are balanced by several gruesome deaths and some genuinely spooky dream sequences. It's slated for DVD release later this year.

We saw -- and liked -- director's earlier film, Ghost of the Needle, at HoleHead 2004. It was great to see Brian Avenet-Bradley back with his new feature, and we were even more pleased to find that the movie scared the crap out of us.

As in Mae Nak, Dark Remains features pissed off ghosts who pop up and look yucky. The pop-ees are another married couple, this time parents of a murdered child who've retreated to a cabin in the woods to mourn their loss. But there's some bad stuff gong down in their cabin and the woods, stuff that had the entire crowd at the Roxie jumping and screaming at every turn. Definitely one to watch with the lights off, DVD distribution is still in the works for this tasty genre pic.

"What's it like in there?" they'd ask us. "Is it scary?" "Well, no" we'd say, right before they'd remind us that the love of our life spends a lot of his free time choking and beating people, so maybe our perception is off.

As opposed to shrieking "Well, why did you ask, then?", we're instead encouraging anyone and everyone to head over to Fight and Fitness this Saturday night at 6 p.m. for their first-ever all-female smoker (a smoker's just a term for an informal boxing match). They tell us that right now they have 13 fights lined up in the disciplines of boxing, Muay Thai, and Mixed Martial Arts, with female fighters coming from Fight and Fitness, Fairtex, Cheetah Muay Thay, Baby Face Boxing, Team USA, Universal Martial Arts, Cung Le Martial Arts, and Modern Combatives.

While we're looking forward to this event in its entirety, we're personally most excited about the MMA match. We've never seen one with female fighters before, so we're eager to see these fighters in action. This free event is open to everyone, so come out to 734 Bryant St. (at 5th) and support womens' combat sports.

Arriving thirty minutes early, we started warming up, roadwork, push-ups, a couple of rounds of shadowboxing. Sure, we do Muay Thai, but for all intents and purposes we are an embarrassment to the sport, and a career in combat sports will never open up for us. We figured that this will be only our chance to shine. This will be our Rocky moment, our thrilla in Manila.

Since Sam wrote such a great review, we eschewed our second visit, and will just give some quick notes of our first impressions. Overall, we were quite pleased with the place. The hostess charmed us, speaking French to us, and checking on us regularly. We appreciated the complimentary papadam, fresh fried for us. The garbanzo bean salad (chamna; $5) was a bit too onion-y for our taste. But we have seen raw onion salad in Indian places, so we cannot fault Dosa for sticking to its authenticity gun here. Similarly, the lentil soup (rasam;$4) is probably supposed to be watery, and it did pack some spicy heat anyway.

There are two categories of Thai restaurants, nowadays: the lounge-y kind, with black clad petite waiters and waitresses, ambient music with a techno beat, sleek furniture. The traditional kind, also known as kitschy, with wooden sculptures, convoluted gilded frames hanging on the walls, and waiters outfitted in bright pink or electric blue silks. In the first category, one could find the Castro Thai Chef, the Mission Baku. In the latter, Surya, Thep Phanom, or Manora. Such a chiasm, such a generational disrepancy calls for SFist's Food Face-Off #5: Battle Thai.

In the lounge category: Osha Thai Noodle, a two year old place in the Mission, which we'll talk about today; in the classic category: you'll have to wait until next week. Osha has two other outposts, downtown and in SOMA.

Let's take a look behind the scenes at the Gastronomique production studio. The question that we get all the time (email us your questions, comments, or suggestions here, btw, we want your input) is: how do you pick the places that you review? Well, that's easy: we read the free weeklies, and if a restaurant advertises with "grand opening" and "take 10% off your meal with this coupon," we are in.

Consider Thai Chef, for instance. Oh, we could make up a story of visiting the new De Young museum after some highly sophisticated event, like, say, Opera in the Park, and catching sight of Thai Chef's sign from the top of the tower, catching a whiff of their kitchen's fumet through a crack in the window and being forcefully drawn there by some powers beyond our control. But then we would not be able to share with you the 10% discount, and we're all about the cheap stuff.