Scala Shark's Fin Restaurant, Siam Square, Bangkok

This retro looking Chinese restaurant (218-218/1 Siam Square 1, opp. Scala Theatre, Bangkok, tel : +66 02-252-0322, 02-251-8899, 02-251 4799) has been around a little longer than I have and on the authority of someone who had been a customer for about three decades and is clinically allergic to MSG, the food here was good and recommended for its quality.

It seemed that the wait staff in this place were similar as the ones from Shaslik. Most of them had been part of the crew from the early days of the restaurant and that they had been around forever. Apparently there are a few other similarly named restaurants that use the name of Scala and this one was the original. They even indicated that they do not have any other branches on their business card.

The restaurant was an altogether not unfamiliar facade. The main stay dishes consisted of abalone, shark's fin, crabs and prawns. Traditional fruits of the sea for the wealthy Chinese. I was told that the food here hasn't changed much since the beginning.

Not to fill the shoes of Captain Obvious but, the specialty of the restaurant is shark's fin soup. These came in a claypot and were portioned from 800 - 5000 baht. The price of course, commensurates the amount of fin that one gets in the serving. The quality of the fin I hear, is all the same. Only the good ones are served. The brown broth was wicked with a healthy dose of powdered white pepper and sloshes of vinegar.

I couldn't comment much on the fins since I don't eat them so often. Wouldn't even consider ordering them under usual circumstances.

The restaurant also serves stir fried fish maw which was awesome. The texture of the maw was expectedly sponge like slightly chewy, flavoured by a certain savoury seasoning which I couldn't identify. It might have been a soy sauce based and it was to say the least, mouthwatering. I'm going to remember this place for the fish maw rather than the shark's fin.

We ordered a pot of collagen rich braised goose web. In retrospect, there was a little too much soup going on in this lunch. After the shark's fin, none of us in particular were really interested in having more fluids.

Our obligatory greens for the lunch today was boiled kale with oyster sauce. The stems of these greens retained quite a bit of crunch and sweetness, almost akin to water chestnuts. I had to admit that they were pretty good.

The carbs came in the form of crab fried rice. This was nicely done with the rice well tossed in the wok with eggs and came with very generous portions of chunky crab meat. It was also light enough that I had seconds.

I'm marking this place for returns the next time I visit Bangkok.