Here's a perplexing truth about restaurants:

If it's busy, the service is generally good.

If it isn't, the service can be lousy.

That's what happened over a couple of visits at Neo of Melaka, a Malaysian restaurant that opened up in the restaurant mecca along East River Road and North Campbell Avenue.

The thing is, the food was sublime. One bite of the vegetarian spring roll ($3), a bouncy rice paper tightly wrapped around rice noodles, julienned carrots and bean sprouts and dipped in a sweet hoisin-based peanut sauce, and we forgot we had waited so long for the treat.

Neo is the sister restaurant of Seri Melaka at 6133 E. Broadway. The River Road location has it all over the brightly lit Broadway restaurant when it comes to ambience. It is slick, urban, with fancy bamboo ceiling fans, a cool-looking bar in the center and subtle lighting.

Other than that, you'll find this: The food is just as tempting at Neo as it is at Seri Melaka.

Neo's Tom Yam soup ($9 for vegetarian, more if you add ingredients) is laced with delicate lemon grass and kicked with chile, the broth is thickened with coconut cream, and chock-full of fresh tomatoes, scallions, slightly browned potatoes and button mushrooms. We asked that chicken be tossed in ($4 more), and plenty of moist strips of white meat were.

The Tom Yam is a sort of exotic chicken soup — you just know that it's capable of curing most anything and making you feel like life is grand.

The same is true of the lemak ($16 with chicken or beef — we found the chicken more tender).

This stewlike dish has just enough chiles to give you the sniffles. It's woodsy with lemon grass, pungent with turmeric, sweet with pineapple chunks and coconut milk, colorful with fresh tomatoes and filled out with browned potatoes.

It's fat with flavors and textures, and the sublime taste lives long in the memory.

A more meaty dish offers just as much pleasure: lamb chops ($20) in a rendang sauce (you can have lemak or sambal sauces if you choose). The lamb, cooked the requested medium rare, was a very fine piece of meat, almost a little gamey and bursting with flavor. Three fat chops sat on the plate with snow peas and eggplant.

But it was the traditional rendang sauce that added a glorious touch. With a base of coconut broth and enhanced with spices such as lemon grass, turmeric and chile, and then just specked with coconut, it was a sauce you want to write sonnets to. It underscored, rather than overpowered, the subtle lamb.

Just as thrilling — yes, thrilling — was the roast duck ($15). Crispy skinned and taken off the bone and cut into pieces (except for the legs), it was moist but never greasy, a common duck problem.

It was mixed up with bok choy, snow peas, red peppers, baby corn and an understated Hunan sauce that lent more of a beefy richness than it did the traditional heat.

For dessert, consider this: A fresh, pulpy glass of just-made mango juice ($4). It could change your life.

We left Neo happily satisfied with the food after each visit. Now, it just needs to be busy more consistently so that the service can improve.

Neo of Melaka

1765 E. River Road, 299-7815

Hours: 11 a.m.-9:30 Sundays through Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays; bar open until 2 a.m.

Family call: Kids seem comfortable here, though the ambience seems more "grown-up."

Noise level: Can get a tad loud when crowded

Vegetarian choices: Several

Dress: High casual

Reservations: Accepted