This restaurant (69 South Sathorn Road, Thungmahamek, Sathorn District, Bangkok 10120, tel : +66 0 2675 4200 1) came by a recommendation of a friend, who was also our unofficial day itinerary manager for this trip. In his words, eating Thai food at Baan Khanitha would be very similar to having local food in Long Beach or maybe Tung Lok. One generally gets a superficial representation of what people eat in Thailand, but the said representatives are reflective of the cuisine and are also well prepared.
The restaurant in the night was actually pretty charming. It looked like a wood furnished beach resort of sorts in the middle of the city with art pieces on display.
The restaurant in the night was actually pretty charming. It looked like a wood furnished beach resort of sorts in the middle of the city with art pieces on display.
We were first served with some miang kham, which was an appetizer. A Thai styled amuse bouche of sorts if you will. How this worked was basically, one picks a betel leaf and wraps the accompanying items on the side which included dried shrimp, peanuts, diced lime, shallots, ginger, chillis and dried coconut along with a fish sauce and tamarind dip. Of course, I did the wrap without the ginger. This was surprisingly very good for most of us that we ordered seconds. The ingredients that were provided worked very well together in an explosive blend of sweet, salty, sour and spiciness with a nutty element.
Another appetizer which we ordered was crispy rice crackers with a sweet, sour and spicy paste.
The pandan chicken was delicious. The nicely browned chicken was well cooked and juicy.
Another deep fried starter were prawn paste cakes. I think they would have made pretty good bar snacks and certainly did their part in keeping our mouths busy while waiting for the other dishes to be served. What I appreciated about them were that none of the fried stuff we had were overly greasy.
Here's a grilled seafood platter which featured their gigantic river prawns, regular prawns, squid and crayfish. I'm kinda enjoying the fact that the common crustaceans here are generally bigger than the ones back home which tended to be smaller and more expensive. Nothing very exciting here except for the river prawns and crayfish which I liked better than the squid which suffered from the lack of char aroma and grill marks.
This was the plate of obligatory vegetables for the evening which tasted pretty much like how they looked.
We had opted for two renditions of their tom yam goong. This white version with coconut milk was delicious. The sour and spicy flavours were heavily bolstered by a rich coconut flavour which resulted in a slightly more viscous consistency which like Thai green curry. Each of their tom yam goong came with two river prawns as well. Would definitely love to come back for this again.
The red rendition of the tom yam goong tasted clearer, but it also had a more identifiable, yet almost subtle flavour of the prawn heads. Nicely done here.
The sweetish, hint of sour and spicy duck curry from Baan Khanitha was interesting. It contained things which I hadn't had in curries before. Besides duck, there were grapes, pineapple, eggplant; those curious looking baby eggplants which looked like green peas. The texture of those little green balls were crunchy with a hint of bitter.
Their non-excessively greasy omelette came fried with a nice chewy crust. I guess it was that nice browned crust that elevated this from the usual fried egg.
I've seldom, if ever, have had this dessert so I just had to just order them since I was here and it was pretty darn good. The coconut infused glutinous rice was tender and sticky, textured with crispy rice over the top while the mango was juicy and sweet. It would have been better with a stronger citrus but I'm not complaining.
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