Bangkok recommendations

[Behemoth]

Well, Bo.Lan certainly wins the prize for most useless website. Lots of fancy Flash but none of it works, and neither does the online reservation link. Ugh!

 

 

I got to the reservation page, it just took forever and a day to get there (plus it's a pop-up window, so if you block pop-ups, you have to allow them then start from the very beginning again). Does it not submit? I filled it out, just to see if I could, but I didn't submit.

 

You can get there directly from http://bolan.co.th/reservation.html if you want to try again.

 

Definitely an annoying restaurant website.

 

Cool -- I couldn't get to that link. Let's see if it works

[balex]

I went to Nahm in Bangkok last week. I was a bit sceptical as I didn't like Nahm in London very much,

and I don't like chains .. but it was superb. In the Metropolitan hotel.

 

Very refined, but with no punches pulled. The star was a gaeng tai pla which is a Southern fish "curry"

made with a lot of fermented fish guts etc. Absolutely delicious and full on in terms of heat, pungency, textural interest, etc.

 

In general they removed all inedible bits from the dishes -- normally the chunks of lemon grass etc are left in --

and the presentations were rather elegant.

e.g. a nam prik num which is a standard Northern dish was served as a chunk of pork crackling, a dab of nam prik and

then a half quails egg on top.

 

I will go back later in my stay.

 

(I was also in Saigon for a few days but don't have anything intelligent to say about the food there as I am ignorant,

but it was superb.)

[balex]

So the high-end Bangkok food scene is interesting at the moment -- there are 3 serious places -- Bo Lam, Nahm and Sra Bua.

 

I went to Sra Bua last night. This is an offshoot of a Copenhagen based Thai restaurant -- very ambitiously

trying to do 3-star modern cooking but starting from Thai food rather than French food. So a certain amount of foams, clouds of dry ice etc.,

cornets served individually at the beginning, like at the FL.

 

Also some nods to Noma -- one dish was stalks of asparagus in a flower pot with edible soil (in a red curry mousse).

 

It was most succesful when it was most Thai. A Tom Klong soup was served as a clear broth of the dried/smoked fish, made with a sort of mackerel,

and served with three jellies with various herbs in.

A delicious yam som oo with river shrimps, and a tom kha made with quail rather than he traditional chicken.

A frozen lobster red curry, a bunch of amuses of varying degrees of success.

 

The puddings were excellent -- a variety of riffs on traditional Thai dessert flavours -- salted coconut icecream, banana cake.

some ice-creams with ginger and pineapple.

 

I don't know anywhere else doing food like this, except I guess the mother ship in Copenhagen -- Kiin Kiin.

Definitely worth a visit -- even if you don't like foaming test-tube food.

 

(It's in the Siam Kempinski behind the Paragon -- so BTS to Paragon, go down to the food level and walk across to Gate 6).

[Wilfrid]

I recall nothing like that in Bangkok. I am nostalgic for the grilled cuttlefish or chicken liver 'n' bacon served on skewers at night-time street stalls.

[Eatmywords]

We did almost all of our eating off the street too. Often from a stick or a little plastic bag.

 

However we did have a somewhat elevated meal at Hemlock (not far from Khao San road. Yes, tourist central). Very nice flavor combinations and presentations at this place. More refined than what we were getting used to.

 

As I was looking for my pics and notes (couldn’t find them - it’s been a couple years) I came across a post which happened to include two of the dishes we sampled and liked very much; miang kam, a do it yourself wrap of fresh piper leaves with lime, ginger, shallots, dried shrimp, peanuts, dried coconut, sweet chili sauce and Grand Lotus rice w/consisted of prawns, roast pork, mushrooms, thai sausage, and lotus seeds, and a green chili sauce. I remember many other interesting dishes I would have liked to come back to but our time was limited.

 

http://www.foodgps.com/hemlock-bangkok-thailand/

 

(The post is 5yrs old but I imagine not much has changed as the same items where offered to us 2 yrs later)

[balex]

The street food is still very good but for various reasons I am not eating on the street much this trip --

still, we had some very good khao muk gai -- sort of Indian chicken rice -- on Soi Convent which is a good spot for street food,

and some very good slightly unusual "chinese" noodles whose name I don't recall. Scraps of wide noodles like sen yai,

with sweet soy sauce, bits of braised chicken, strips of tofu, sprinkled with crispy fried garlic and some other herbs.

Today was khao men gai, followed by some duck noodles.

[beachfan]

Any updates?

[foodie52]

I'll be there in May and will be staying two weeks with my brother and his family. Lots of meals planned.

[balex]

Three good meals at newish places

 

In Chiang Mai:

Wanlamun

Bangkok style food, not Northern, but very refined: 'palace food'. Traditional, correctly spiced, though I have a feeling that they will generally turn it down for foreigners, so it is probably worth being clear that they should not. Beautifully presented, and a very high level of preparation, and 'knife work'. Everything was cut and trimmed perfectly down to each bean sprout being topped and tailed individually. Highly recommended -- as good as anywhere in Bangkok (or anywhere else for that matter).

 

In Bangkok:

La Table de Tee -- French fusion: basically it is French techniques but with Thai flavours; a single prix fixe menu of 5 courses at the shocking price of 950 baht (about $30).

First course was a variant of Thom Kha Goong -- a very richly flavoured shellfish broth, rather like a bisque, with coconut, some prawns and delicious quenelle of fish mousse as well. Really excellent. Four out of 5 dishes were very good, including the dessert.

Not 100% successful, but definitely worth a visit if you feel like some more European food with a reduced level of spice. Down a dingy alleyway of Sala Daeng so quite central.

 

Also in Bangkok: Soul food Mahanakorn

This is near Thong Lo station (a bit out to the east down Sukhumvit but easy to get too).

This does good versions of 'street food'; some interesting cocktails, music playing, reasonable decor, vaguely hipsterish vibe.. Run by an American foodie so it is a little too much like a restaurant in Brooklyn for my taste, but I think most people on MF would like it for that reason. Delicious food, not 100% authentic, but very close to the originals and with good strong flavours. So things like grilled Issan sausages, chicken wings, some noodles etc. Nice place to hang out for a while. Worth going. For some reason, I don't remember the individual dishes that well. Possibly a cocktail related issue.

[balex]

On the noodle and street food front:

 

'yen ta fo'

A fish themed noodle soup which has cuttlefish, fish balls, deep fried tofu, some vegetable, duck blood lumps, a few other unidentifiable bits and pieces in a clear broth with a red sauce made of fermented tofu.

Strange and not entirely to my taste.

 

And some 'boat noodles' which were excellent.

At a place called River Noodle in a covered market called Bon Marché in the north of bangkok.

This style of noodle is served in a small bowl, (so you normally have more than one bowl) with a smaller amount of strongly flavoured sauce (so intense by Thai standards). One was pork in nam tok style, and the other was pork balls

in a tom yum sauce. Both very good and almost painfully delicious; intense but very balanced.

[Sneakeater]

Balex's life is TOO GOOD.

[Wilfrid]

Ha, why can't they get bigger bowls!!??

[balex]

Ha, why can't they get bigger bowls!!??

 

Actually, there is a whole small bowl thing going on caused by some governmental initiative where you get to put up a blue flag signifying 'good value meal' if your prices are under a certain level -- I think 30Baht so about a dollar. Predictably, a lot of places have shrunk their prices and bowls a bit to sneak under the threshold.

[Wilfrid]

Aha. I was betting on storage, but that's a good reason.

[balex]

Boat noodles are called boat noodles because they were served from boats so I think you might be right about the size explanation. The current small bowl thing is very recent and unrelated.