As a university town, New Haven has long had a concentration of ethnic restaurants but we can't think of any as stylish as Bentara. The space is wharehouse large, with high ceiling and well-spaced tables in several dining areas. A cavernous look as avoided by extremely sophisticated decoratingshadow puppets projected from three screens in the rear, Malaysian baskets stacked in a corner near the large front windows, a bamboo screen separating the bar area, niches displaying subtle, well-chosen handcrafts.

Malaysian is one of the lesser known Asian cuisines, but diners with a hankering for Chinese, Indonesian, Indian and Thai cooking wil find certain compatible ingredients and culinary styles.

Each dish is carefully described to avoid confusion. As a safe haven of familiarity, Beef satay was one of our starters - marinated, grilled and skewered beef, prettily served with red onions, cucumber slices and coconut-peanut sauce - deeply flavored but predictable. We opted also for the less familiar roti murtabak: small squares of unleavened ghee bread filled with a mixture of ground beef, onions and eggs, jazzed up by two zesty dips, curry and chopped sweet-sour red onions.

Other worthy appetizers were curry mussels (with slivered onions, green peppers and tomatoes in a delicate curry sauce). Manila clams (with onions and piementoes in a clear broth redolent of lemongrass, garlic and scallions) and pechal (a warm salad with blanched water spinach, bean sprouts, green beans, hard boiled egg slices and a sassy shrimp paste-peanut sauce)

Many of our entrees were standouts. Especially notable we Rendang (chicken sprinkled with black sesame seeds, tofu, Chinese eggplant chunks and green beans in a lemongrass-spiked coconut curry) and Asam pedas seafood (a fish/shrimp/calamari stew with Chinese eggplant, green beans and tomatoes in a subtle hot-sour tamarind broth). Also worth one's attention was udang goreng pedas, which consisted of hot and spicy shrimp with slivered onions and green beans.

The menu is attractive to vegetarians, with many noodle dishes and soups. We were keen on goreng kang kong - stir-fried water spinach (kang kong) with onions, garlic, roasted red pepper strips, and hot chilies, with a shower of black sesame seeds on top. We ordered it with a piquant shrimp paste, but it is available without.

Our most contoversial dish was nasi lemak, a mixture of hot and spicy stir-fried beef and dried anchovies fried until crunchy, tossed with pulverized hot chilies, garlic and ginger. The plate was adorned with whole peanuts, hard-boiled egg and cucumber slices, with a mound of sweet-tasting rice (boiled in coconut milk) in the center. On balance, we liked all the taste and textural challenges through the anchovy-beef mixture was certainly a novelty to Western palate. We punctuated our feast with coconut sorbet, fittingly served in a bowl resembling an inner coconut shell.

Let-downs on the sizable menu were few. The soft triangles in tofu sumbat (a starter) had the texture and roughness of cardboard, and a french chocolate cake in raspberry coulis was excessively sweet.

Dinner for two, three courses a piece, came to $45.80, before tax, tip and drinks. The wine list had many interesting choices from France, California and elsewhere, extremely well-priced from $14; there is also suprisingly good beer selection