Bangkok Jam, Great World City

I've been wondering if the 'jam' part of the name in Bangkok Jam (1 Kim Seng Promenade, #02-26 Great World City, tel : +65 67324523) referred to the playing of music or was it just pointing to the infamous traffic jams in Bangkok. Maybe it was neither. Perhaps it was just an unlikely commemorative to the delicious fruit relishes and preserves one uses on bread.

Anyway, these guys do Thai food.  Albeit on a more refined level that one commonly finds in the streets of Bangkok.

Their pomelo salad with shrimps a.k.a. yum som o was good. The flavours of saltiness, sweet, spicy and sour created a refreshing taste with citrus coupled with very nice textural contrast from the chunky segments of the fruit, cashew nuts and what looked like tiny crispy shrimps. This alone would make me come back again.

Lemongrass prawn cakes were pretty decent. What it doesn't say is that there are kernels of corn in those prawn cakes and there wasn't any lemongrass flavour I could detect. The only "lemongrassiness" were the stalks of lemongrass that were made into handles for the prawn cakes.

No real complains about the fried chicken wings here but I thought that the split mid wings were done better at Greyhound Cafe. These ones here were strangely accompanied with dried chilli which seemed to be on the plate for only presentation purposes?

Here's a serving of a phad kra prow gai. This tasted a lot more refined (think savoury chicken basil Bolognese sans tomato) and less spicy than the one I've had once in Geylang. What I meant by spicy was a lip numbing burn that sent prickling sensations all over my perspiring scalp.

Bangkok Jam's tom khai gai was nothing like what I had expected. The rendition here was heavy on the coconut milk and mild on the sour and spicy flavours. I could have described this to be a savoury version of bubor charchar with pieces of chicken inside.

Dessert was steamed tapioca with syrup and coconut milk. We ordered this because the restaurant had run out of khao neow mamuang. In retrospect, this wasn't bad. The dessert wasn't as heavy as I had feared and  the chunks of tapioca were suitably sweeten and tender that it reminded me of sweet potatoes.

I am determined to come back again to try their mango sticky rice though.