Just when you feared that Thai food in these towns would never begin to match what you've had on one of the coasts, that you'd never get any help breaking out of the Bermuda triangle of rice noodles, coconut milk, and peanut sauce, along came Tum Rup Thai. The menu here offers all the standards, but if you insist on looking there, you're missing the boat. For there are also basil-shrimp rolls: fat shrimp wrapped first in veritable fistfuls of Thai basil, then in a rice wrapper, and finally deep-fried and served with a sweet-and-sour sauce and a limey jalapeño dipping sauce. There's a peerless selection of salads—the department where Thai ingredients really shine, in our view—including the Crying Tiger, in which char-grilled beef is tossed with lemongrass, chiles, mint, and roasted rice powder and served atop lettuce and cucumbers. Or you might try the Naked Shrimp, in which enough shrimp to please a linebacker are tossed with a hot and sour dressing, scattered with lemongrass meant to serve more as an ingredient than a condiment, and arranged on greens and vegetables. There's beer, wine, and sake, and speaking of things that are rare as hen's teeth, acres of free parking, despite Tum Rup's Uptown location.