Only 2 Thai restaurants in the world have a Michelin Star and both have sister restaurants in Bangkok – Sra Bua (of Kiin Kiin) and Nahm (by David Thompson) – I made it a point to visit both of these establishments while in Bangkok!

Sra Bua by Kiin Kiin is the Bangkok arm of the Michelin Star rated Kiin Kiin in Denmark and is located in the Siam Kepanski hotel, attached to the Siam Paragon shopping centre. This was a perfect way to ease ourself into the New Year with excellent deconstructed take on Thai food.

A light refreshing (distilled) Lemongrass and Pandan Tea was served. A delicious clear tea (very different to the brown muddy Lemongras and Pandan leaf tea I have brewed at home myself.

We started with some Nibblings: Soy roasted Cashews nut meringue, Kaffire Lime leaf scented lotus root and Prawn Cracker with Chilli Tomato Dip.

The Street Cooking : Tuna Tartare with Peanut Cookies, Miang Som-O, Frozen Curry with Lobster and Lychee, Crispy Pork Crackling with Curry Powder and Deep Fried Shrimp with Miso and Dip.

The most memorable dish was the Frozen Lobster and Lychee Curry – the textures were smooth and it seemed more like a curry ice-cream with succulent lobster and fragrant lychee.

After the teasers, we moved onto the main menu… Here there were a few hits and misses…

Tom Yum Soup with Prawn Base with Galangal. The concept was exciting. Have a small sip of a  hot Tom Yum soup base, pop one of these gelatine spheres (infused with ginger, chilli or lemongrass) in your mouth which are supposed to melt release their flavour. Good in theory – didn’t work in practise. The melting point of the gelatine was much higher than what my soup and my mouth could achieve. It’s an interesting concept and deconstruction but the resultant effect was a warm soup and cold piece of jelly in my mouth.  The gelatine melting point needs a little tweaking.

Orchid Salad with River Prawn & Chilli Foam – this was a light delicious dish, with striking use of colour and ingredients. The light chilli foam brought enough bite to the dish without being overly overwhelming.

Scallop with Baby Carrot and Tamarind. Interesting combination as the sweetness of the carrot, in many textures, brought out that of the scallop.

Poached Egg with Morning Glory – This dish usually comes with oyster but was omitted from our dishes at our request.

We were given a choice for the mains of quail (pictured above) or white fish in coconut milk with galangal and Chantrelle Mushrooms. I’m sure they use fresh coconut milk as the dish was quite light on the palate.

The desserts were in a class of their own. Sublime in presentation and divine in taste! Not very Thai – or with token Thai contributions but that is easily overlooked. We tucked in and even forgot to photograph the final desert! The deserts included: Tim Saparod with Pineapple, Ginger and Lime Sorbet;  Banana Cake with Salted Ice cream and  Caramelized Milk and finished with Mignardises.

So delicious, we were carried away and forgot to shoot first!

The full degustation is 2400B, its a bargain! There is a quicker and abridged version for 1800B.

Next time in Bangkok we will eat there again. We would have gone twice in our last visit but the restaurant only changes its menu every 3 months subject to seasonal availability of produce.

It’s a place for superior indulgence! At $400 AUD per person it is expensive but delivers a memorable meal. A party of 3 adults (and 1 baby) enjoyed well paced meal in a private Teppanyaki style dinning room which concluded in a promisingly named “dessert room”. The service was flawless and they accommodated our baby (seated in his pram) without fuss and my husband’s request for more dessert (see Waku Ghin Dessert Room)!

The carbon footprint of this meal is incredible with ingredients being sourced from Scotland, Canada, Japan and Australia. It is well balanced and thoughtfully prepared with care. The attention to detail is outstanding!

This was possibly one of the best meals of my entire life and we intend to go back again soon!

The fresh ingredients which were to be part of our meal were presented to us ocean fresh. The abalone were still wiggling in their shells!

The meal started with a delicate Flan with Hokkido Salmon roe.

Seared Tuna

SIGNATURE DISH: Marinated Botan Ebi woth Sea Urchin & Oscietre Caviar

Twice cooked Scottish Bamboo Clam with Olive & Garlic Cream

Slow cooked John Dory with Roasted Eggplant (the eggplant was divine!)

Hokkido Abalone with Fregola and Tomato

Braised Canadian Lobster with Tarragon

Australian Wagyu with Wasabi & Ctirus Soy

Somen with Myoga and Jansai

These were the dishes presented in the private dining room before moving onto the desert room. There were “pregnancy” friendly options with substitutions for the Hokkido Salmon Roe with delicately grilled scallop. We were also given a choice between the Somen noodles and Snapper and Rice fish broth which my husband chose.

Pregnancy Friendly options: Flan with Scallop Roe

This is only the mains. The rest of the meal continues in the dessert room!

Momofuku Seiobo

There were a few hurdles -

Difficult to get a reservation – Bookings can be made on line and places are only open at 10am SHARP and gone by 10.02am on a weekday… Although Sunday, no one seems to be on the net at 10am and it was easier for me to make a reservation for a Tuesday.

Children were strongly discouraged to dine – In the 10 days prior to our reservation, we were strongly discouraged to bring our baby.  I explained, via email, that our baby had attended many a degustations without too much drama and we were happy to provide our own baby chair. I’m pleased to say that Blake enjoyed most of the courses and sat watching his Baby Einstein DVD’s for the 3 hour degustation.

The Meal -

Steamed bun with Pork Bello, Cucumber and Hoisin (the signature dish)

Sea mullet with nectarine and szechuen pepper

Marron with fennel and dill

Wagyu beef with radish & fermented black bean (delicious baby bite sized wagyu beef were an unlikely combination with the translucent radish)

Smoked Eel Jerusalem artichoke and pink grapefruit

Blue Swimmer Crab, Old Bay and Yorkshire pudding (delicious sauce – I wish I could reverse engineer this!)

Poached Egg with toasted rice and brown butter

Pea Agnolotti, parmesan and ham (this was my husbands favourite dish – what you can’t taste was the white parmesan foam was ice cold compared to the rest, an interesting contrast).

Mulloway with smoked roe with lettuce

Lamb neck with onions & mustard seeds

c2 with honey liquorice and bee pollen (the Momofuku desserts attempted to be quirky with different twists on conventional ingredients and either promised a lot but delivered short (e.g. Miso ice-cream ) or a little boring (e.g. Poached Peach).

Poached peach with rose foam and pistachio sorbet

Miso ice-cream with cherries and black sesame crumble

12 hours slow roasted sweet pork shoulder

Pet peeve -

I would much prefer having the menu given to me prior to a degustation so I can know what to expect. We had wait staff which looked as old as the children serving you at McDdonalds bring us our food without much of an explanation but rather gave us a list of ingredients of what we were eating.

Desserts are pretty but not very memorable. The strength of the meal is definitely with the mains. It was also quite odd for the meal to end on a sweet slow roasted pork. I felt like more dessert – so I ended up going across to ZUMBO for cake after dinner!

Overall -

We had a lovely time. The staff were very attentive and service was flawless. Go in with an open mind and not too many expectations and you’ll have a great time!

The secrets I learnt from the Blue Elephant Thai Cooking School in Bangkok.

Here are the basic Thai ingredients which will make a wonderful marinade for any meat. Combine

• Fish Sauce
• Palm Sugar (can be substituted with raw sugar)
• Tamarind concentrate
• Lime Juice
• Dried Chilli
• Ground Roasted Sticky Rice.

The most difficult thing was making sure I had all the base ingredients. I would recommend at visit to Lucky Thai Grocery Store (40 Campbell St, Haymarket) in Thaitown. There is a wonderful Thai grocery shop which has everything and one of the employees took pity on me – grabbed my shopping list, ran around the shop and filled my shopping basket! Wonderful service!  They have fresh ingredients with exotic fruit and vegetables required for Thai cooking.

760 George St, Sydney 2000

www.petalingst.com.au

This restaurant was recommended to me by a fellow foodie and Hawker food lover. I have been a bit slow on the uptake to this “chain store” which has a heavy presence in Victoria. They have the classics eg: roti, laksa, etc …  which can wait for another time…

Prawn Noodle Soup was very spicy and the soup was lite but full of flavour. I prefer a denser prawn based soup and this dish could be improved by bulking up the stock and reducing the amount of hokkien noodles. I dug my way through noodles to locate the prawns, even half a boiled egg was difficult to locate!

K had the Roast Chicken with Dry Noodles which was solid but not spectacular.

Overall, it was a solid reliable experience but we haven’t sampled enough of the menu to pass judgement yet. It’s open until 2AM on Fridays and the weekends – I’m always keen to have somewhere to have a late night Roti snack. I’m quietly confident this place will become a favourite, the menu is vast and there are sure to be a few winners to be discovered! Fingers Crossed!

House Thai 202 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills Ph:9280 0364

FOOD:

The food is superb! Northern Thai food is very different to the widespread “suburban” Thai found more commonly in Australia and takes a little introduction. The waitress was very helpful and guided us thoroughly through the menu with sufficient detail and explanations. The dishes we sampled (together with sticky rice)were:

MOK GAI HUA PLEE – a steamed Chicken curry presented in an exciting banana leaf package. The dish was infused with the usual Thai mix of lemongrass, chilli and galangal but the steaming process took the “heat” off and brought out the delicate flavour and textures.

TUM MUA PLA KROB – a fresh take on a green papaya salad with crunchy anchovies with lime and chilli give it a bit of bite!

KOR MOO YANG – this was the weakest dish of the meal (and one I chose – Opps). I was anticipating an excellent dipping sauce – were fresh in my memory from our recent trip to Thailand. This dish is a very standard grilled pork neck fillets with an average and slightly overly salty dipping sauce. It may have suffered a little due to my high expectations.

OTHER STUFF:

House Thai is located in a noisy “beer” garden attached to an inner city pub on a busy city street. The traffic can overwhelm quiet dining conversation but could add to the energy on a busy Friday or Saturday night.

I was in need of a late night snack! I had a craving for a cheesecake (which was spurred on by recent fond memories of a white chocolate cheesecake at La Scala, Griffith), I had a look at a few recipes on the internet and my cook books and I decided to reverse engineer one. I combined white chocolate with a dash of lime to cut through the sweetness – delicious and not too sweet or rich.

Instructions:

Base: Crush 150g of short bread biscuits with 25g of unsalted butter. Combine, and compact on base of container(s) and bake 190 degrees for 10 mins.

Cheesecake: Combine 45g of caster sugar with 1 table spoon of cornflour and mix with 250g of cream cheese until smooth. Combine with 2 eggs. Add 100g of melted white chocolate with the zest of one lime. Pour mixture onto bases and cover with foil and bake at 170 for 30 mins (or 20mins if you make baby cheesecakes).

You can eat the straight out of the oven when they are warm but they have a consistency of a dense rich sponge or leave them overnight in the fridge and you wake up to delicious dense baby cheesecakes.

Makes 4 mini cheesecakes.

(PS: from the photo you can see that I burnt my cheesecakes a little around the edges so dropped the temperature in the recipe a bit.)

Shang Palace

Top 3 Chinese restaurant in Bangkok

Level 3, Shangri-la Hotel, Bangkok.

The most amazing Peking Duck in town!

We have Peking duck semi-regularly in Australia but the Peking Duck at the Shang Palace beats the ones we’ve eaten back in Sydney without question.

At the Shang Palace, the Peking duck is prepared table side. We watched crispy duck skin being defatted to enhance the crispyiness. The homemade pancakes were delicately pan fried and thin enough to hold the contents together without interfering with the texture or taste of the crispy duck skin. The duck skin is crisp and holds just the perfect amount of fat so that multiple duck pancakes can be consumed without feeling to heavy in the stomach.

We shared 1 peking duck (2 courses) and market fresh gai-lan stir fried in garlic between 2 people. We planned to ordered another main but was wisely informed that this would be too much for our table. The adjacent table shared 1 duck between 10 people. The serving ratio of 1 duck between 2 people is (slightly) indulgent but between 10 people is simply criminal!

The remaining duck meat is shredded into small pieces for second course San Choy Bow. The minced duck meat was served with finely diced carrots, pine nuts and cucumber. It was clear I was going to run out of iceberg lettuce and was offered more without asking. We asked for some duck meat to be set aside for our baby (who loves duck) and we were given some complementary slices of roasted duck meat for him. He tucked into the duck meat and the gai-lan with zest!

Overall: Order the Peking Duck; Child/Baby friendly – providing extra baby appropriate food upon request but bring your own strap for the high chair (we use the should strap from my husband’s laptop bag or my handbag), Generous Servings and Fresh ingredients.

I’m not a buffet fan – but this was an amazing night.: in presentation, entertainment and quality of food!

The Dining Room at the Grand Hyatt Erawan is voted one of the best buffets in Bangkok. This was a perfect place to celebrate Christmass Eve – for excellent reasons: the high quality ingredients eg: an endless supply of pan fried foie gras, freshly sliced proscuitto, creamy full fat ice cream or fresh fruit filled gelato, crisp cherries.

They also provided entertainment and arts and crafts stations for children. A little to old for our baby – but he was good enough to sleep quietly through the whole dinner in his Bugaboo.

My husband and I took turns at the buffet – the only rule was the plate had to have a theme… anti pasto, Japanese, Italian, Meat and my personal favourite – Expensive (foie gras, proscuitto and melon).

Succulent pan fried Foie Gras – I had about 6 servings …