Greyhound Cafe, Siam Centre, Bangkok

the hangover view

Greyhound Cafe (Siam Centre, ground floor, +66 2 6581129 30) looked much like PS Cafe. Reasonably convenient from where we were staying after a late night and casual enough to grab the first meal of the day with much hassle. Which was lunch.

We hit a bunch of finger food for starters which included plates of nicely browned and deep fried half mid wings. Those were very good by the way. And then some corn and crab fritters which was also very nicely done. All the latter just needed a little salt that would have gotten along very very nicely with the sweetness from the corn and crab meat.

The main reason for us visiting was to have their recommended Complicated Kuey Teow. What might that be? I actually hadn't a clue until it was served. I had always imagined it to be some stir fried or soup kuey teow with a fancy name. It turned out to be a board of lettuces with a stack of kuey teow, some green chilli condiment with coriander and a thick minced pork gravy on the side.

One places a thin slice of the kuey teow on the lettuce, adds the sauce and minced meat which is then folded into a vegetable wrap. That's how complicated it all was. Quite good with the play of textures and spicy flavors.

Came back the next day for more of the same stuff up there.

Phaiboon Seafood, Bangrak, Bangkok

More Thai Chinese food again here in Bangkok and this time round, it's the localized home styled restaurant (598/3 near Soi Jomsomboon, Rama 4 Road, Bangrak, Bangkok 10500, tel : + 66 0 2234 9568, 0 8504 70330) down a street near the old Mandarin Hotel.

The oyster omelette they served was a little different from the local variety. We got bigger oysters and a more sticky flour batter along with the crunch of beansprouts in a sizzling hot plate. This was quite delicious.

Phaiboon's tom yum goong has coconut milk, but wasn't done in excess like the rendition served at Baan Khanitha. The flavour from this prawn laden soup were still relatively clear in spite of that addition. It was also a tad spicier.

We had a deep fried prawn spring rolls that married savory, crispy and not excessively greasy.

One of the signature dishes at Phaiboon is apparently their curry crab. This wasn't the conventional curry as many people know of outside of Thailand. The viscous "curry" tasted only slightly spicy, was noticeably sweet and was also quite eggy. After it cooled, the "sauce" congealed and became what I thought looked like otah. While I couldn't say that I didn't like it, the taste was quite singular in dimensions and did become cloying after a while.

The crab however, was fantastically fresh with the sweetness of the meat that shone in the mash of all the other flavors.

The stir fried kang kong appeared to be quite ordinary. I suppose it was their style of the cooking here and didn't come with sambal or belachan. It seemed at the start to be a tame plate of vegetables in garlic until we all hit upon the small camouflaged slices of green chilli (very similarly colored as the kang kong there) that exploded with blazing heat. Pretty good stuff.

Small Potatoes Make The Steak Look Bigger : Year Five

This marker post might have been a little later than usual, but it's been 5 years! :)

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.

Baan Khanitha & Gallery, Sathorn District, Bangkok

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.

miang kham

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.

rice crackers

Another appetizer which we ordered was crispy rice crackers with a sweet, sour and spicy paste.

pandan leaf chicken

The pandan chicken was delicious. The nicely browned chicken was well cooked and juicy.

deep fried prawn cakes

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.

grilled seafood

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.

stir fried broccoli

This was the plate of obligatory vegetables for the evening which tasted pretty much like how they looked.

tom yam goong with coconut milk

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.

tom yam goong

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.

roasted duck curry

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.

omelette with minced sausage

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.

mango with sticky rice

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.

You & Mee, Grand Hyatt, Bangkok

This was a casual cafe (494 Rajdamri Road, Grand Hyatt Erawan Lower Lobby, 10330 Bangkok, Thailand, tel : +66 2 254 1234) that we hit for a quick lunch after we've checked into our hotels. As might be surmised from the name, You & Mee does noodles and quite a lot of it judging from the menu. That was mostly what was available.

I got a bowl of their beef kuey teow in thick soup. It was pretty decent bowl of beef rice noodles with salty meatballs and a savoury sweetish broth which perked up from the dried chilli powder that they had provided on each table. What made this regular bowl of beef noodles more enjoyable were the little dishes of deep fried pork rinds which they had provided. These fried bits were crispy, surprisingly light tasting and made good add on to soak up the broth for extra flavour and texture.

I wouldn't mind coming back again if I'm in the vicinity. Even if it's just for their thick and pulpy cantaloupe juice.