Provence, The Peninsula Plaza, Bangkok

For some reasons, I had in my previous visit thought this place to be L'Occitane Cafe. Seems like it's actually Provence instead. It's a nice little spot of quiet and cool from the bustling crowd and heat of central Bangkok.

Here're some garlic chive dumplings. Very tasty stuff with or without the dip of sweet dark soy sauce dip with sliced bird's eye chilli.

The really outstanding item was their special beef boat noodles. These are called boat noodles as they were traditionally served by vendors on boats along the the canals/rivers of Bangkok. Today, these can also be found in streets away from the waterside as well. In essence, these boat noodles are a small bowl of soup noodles with choice of meat in a broth fortified with spices and blood.

This one has obviously been elevated beyond the boat/street status and into a larger bowl as well, but the method of preparation as I'm guessing, has been largely preserved. The flavours were  both spicy and robust in a earthy savoury manner. Served piping hot. We enjoyed the broth so much that we asked for a refill which the restaurant obliged.

Some tangy spicy wing bean salad. One shouldn't regard Thai salads as a vegetable quota or an afterthought since it is here very often, appetite inducingly tasty.

And for something a little different from the usual Thai stuff, chicken livers wrapped in bacon. In retrospect, this was a mistake. It wasn't grilled as nicely as we would have expected and the red wine sauce was oddly bitter.

Because we had so much food before, it's some sweet mango requested without the glutinous rice. Sweet and juicy they were.

And sugar marinated bananas with texture akin to steamed tapioca. These were accompanied with coconut milk.