Taling Pling, Siam Paragon, Bangkok

This restaurant (Room G30, G/F, Siam Paragon, 991 Rama 1 Rd., Bangkok, tel : 02-129-4353-4), like Nara reminded me of the Thai version of Grandma's. A locally born restaurant in Thailand that has found success in their business with strategically placed branches serving contemporary and traditional Thai food that has won the approvals of both locals and tourists. The food was pretty enjoyable, but service was extremely spotty. It was obvious that the wait staff were never updated on availability until orders are processed and they actually forgot orders in spite of writing them down. Twice for a particular dish even. The serving sequence and timing was also messed up.

This were crispy rice crackers with and pork and peanut coconut dip. Delicious the sweet nutty dip was. Those rice crackers had also tasted a lot better than they looked.

Out of the blue, braised cow's tongue with a salty beefy broth that was very tasty with white rice. I don't pretend to be an expert with Thai food, but I certainly didn't see ox tongue coming.

This omelette with lardon sounded like a good idea. It was for a little bit until the flavors got a little boring. The lard bits could have benefited from a longer time in the fryer and the omelette could certainly have done with less grease since there was already a heap of lard. By this time, we were all wondering what was happening with the order of white rice since the food was starting to arrive. Albeit slowly.

Their stir fried asparagus with shrimp was good. Not fibrous in the slightest and freshly crunchy. 

A couple of items were sold out so we ended up with an odd suggested replacement of garlic clams with garlic bread. It's so straight forwardly unimaginative, conspicuously outstanding like a clown fish amongst piranha and rather unexpected item in a place that served Thai food - but I kinda liked it. 

This is chunky crab meat stir fried with basil and bird's eye chilli. It packed a respectable amount of heat from the chilli, had a nice aroma which wasn't overpowering from the basil and we thought this was rather enjoyable. But - one must enjoy the sadistic ritual of burning one's lips and tongue to enjoy this.

More chunky crab meat was served in a curry with quite a bit of green vegetables. You know what made this rock? No shell. Another item that makes good company with white rice, but we had to hold back against too much starch because......

.....there was also sticky rice and mango which we had been eyeing for dessert. Which was the first out of numerous we had intended to have in this trip. It was little pricey considering what one can get from off the streets, but this was Siam Paragon.