Location: 119 NW Minnesota Ave., Bend

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday for lunch; 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday for dinner

Price Range: Lunch $4.95 to $6.50; dinner entrees $9.95 to $18.95

Alcoholic Beverages: Beer and wine

Kids’ Menu: No

Reservations: For parties of five or more

Credit Cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diner’s Club

Contact: 388-5590

The common assumption that all Thai food is hot, or painfully hot, is plain wrong, says Dan Reisch, floor manager at Toomie’s Thai Cuisine in downtown Bend.

Since all 100-plus menu items are made to order, the hotness can be doused.

If the pan-fried chicken, onion, bamboo shoots, green onion, sweet basil and fresh chili of Gai Prig Prow sounds better easy on the fresh chili, consider it done.

But it works the other way, too. If you desire a mouthful of eye-burning, fiery, red-hot food, the cooks (who like owner Toomie Staver are from Thailand) can fire it up on a sliding scale from zero to three stars. But the curious don’t have to stop at three; there are many more to be had in the Thai galaxy.

Four stars?

That’s fine for the cautious.

Five stars?

Oh yeah. You’re getting warmer – but maybe that’s just the food talking.

We’ll skip six, ignore seven and cut to the chase – eight stars. There were never that many stars in the Spice Girls.

”Eight stars,” says Reisch, ”will definitely put the hurt on.”

That’s what is commonly referred to as Thai hot, and he says most employees have ratcheted their pain thresholds high enough to tolerate the supernova going on in their heads.

Icy liquids, such as Thai iced tea, are advisable should you be so bold.

Reisch adds that there is a chef-recommended weekend special – like they do it in Thailand. The special is offered Friday through Sunday and the diners enjoy a family-style meal prepared by the chef.

Patrons can try newer menu items like the yum apple, a salad of lettuce, sliced green apples, toasted coconut, ground peanuts, carrots and red peppers. For an entree, they can sample shrimp stir-fried with asparagus, shiitake mushrooms and garlic.

Reisch says that diners generally learn of Toomie’s by word of mouth.

But stand back.

There could be flames shooting out of that mouth.