Surprise! NYC has an amazing new Southeast Asian restaurant and itsin the old Time Warner Center

Did I dream that I was eating fabulous Vietnamese beef satay and Lao-style grilled chicken, not at Indochine or Tao Downtown, but on the achingly sterile third floor of Deutsche Bank Center, aka the former Time Warner Center?Nope, it was all real — and one of the year’s happiest restaurant-world surprises. After a mixed-results launch last fall, Twin Tails has hit its stride and is the new culinary star of the Columbus Circle mall. The sprawling Southeast Asian place from the Quality Branded team blows away ghosts of three flops that preceded it on the  third floor.Quality Branded runs venues from tiny Italian trattoria Don Angie to giant steakhouse Smith & Wollensky to Middle Eastern-themed Zou Zou’s.This is the group’s first foray into Asian fare and it’s surprising great.While the crowd-pleasing, gently cosmopolitanized Southeast Asian fare is reminiscent of clubby downtown spots, Twin Tails stops short of being a party scene.

It’s crafted for grown-ups — and for grown-ups’ finances, with small plates priced up to $29, most main courses in the $39-65 range and a few esoteric meat dishes costing up to $130.  Yet, not once did waiters annoy us with the standard “all our dishes are made for sharing” upsell pitch, even though — get this! — they all were large enough to be shared.The antiseptic mall mood vanishes once you step through the brass doors.Twin Tails boasts 300 seats including the bar, a lounge and private rooms, but what most diners will experience is the 140-seat main dining room, which is sectioned by design firm AvroKo into five intimate areas separated by low-rise planters.It wears its faux-exoticism lightly; there are no temple motifs or jade elephants.

Mirrored walls are pink and amber, banquettes are upholstered in deep yellow.Table tops are of burled rosewood, each with its own small shaded lamp that lets you see what you’re eating even if you don’t happen to be seated under custom-made amber glass c...