Nara Thai Cuisine, Central World, Bangkok

This visit to Nara Thai Cuisine (7th Floor, Beacon Zone, Central World, tel : +662 613 1658-9) was unplanned. It was getting late and we were just looking for a place to dinner, quite desperately while roaming and getting lost in Central World. I'm going to venture a guess that it is largely targeted at either tourists like us and the locals that are a bit more affluent since it was a rather nice setup in a large mall in the middle of town. The presentation was more refined and food was pricier than what could be had in the streets or food courts.

It's kinda like eating at Grandma's.

The first item was basically a som tum (green papaya salad) with roasted pork belly. I don't remember if I've ever had them before, but these were pretty good in a refreshing tangy and savoury manner. The raw-ish looking green beans didn't taste as raw as it had looked while the roast pork, which was pretty ordinary, just added texture to the bed of crunchiness.

The menu described this as a sambal fried rice with caramelized pork. The bits of pork were definitely not caramelized were actually pretty soggy and boring. The salted egg however was a nice touch and the small fried shrimps on the top were thumbs up fragrant.

We had our first and only tom yam goong on this trip. As common as they are back home, these always seem to taste smoother in Thailand where there seemed more harmony in the sour, heat and sweetness.

And my favourite (still) Thai dessert, an order of khao neow mamuang. The mango was sweet with a hint of sour and juicy; paired with firm and moist glutinous rice in the coconut sauce. Some day, I'm going to try to make a full meal out of it.

Streetside roti

If anyone was wondering, these were quite commonly found in the streets of Bangkok. They are exactly the same fried pastry that is commonly known as roti prata in Singapore or roti canai in Malaysia. These pastries which are freshly fried in margarine have beaten eggs and banana inside the crust and are later topped with drizzles of condense milk and sugar. Pretty yummy.

Chandrphen Restaurant, Sathorn District, Bangkok

Chandrphen Restaurant  (1030/1 Rama 4, Toongmahamek, Sathorn, Bangkok 10120, tel :  02-287-1535-6, 02-679-7930-1) is an old school Chinese institution that has been operating for 4 generations. They apparently have a prestigious history behind them since their humble beginnings till this day which has earned them a Garuda emblem from one of the kings in Thailand.

One of the dishes they had on appetizer was the salt and pepper stuffed squids. The squids were stuffed with minced bits of chicken and the flavour came mostly from the bits of lightly fried garlic over the top. These slightly chewy squids would excellent beer snacks if I might say so.

A little salad of tropical vegetables on the side which we had apparently neglected to use except for the sliced cucumbers which served as a placebo cleanser after all the grease in the food. On hindsight, a squeeze of the lime would have been great on the squids.

The choice of carbs was crab fried rice. Even though I was hoping for chunky pieces of crab, the generous portions of shredded meat gave me little reasons to gripe.

There was also an order of some crab nuggets which are akin to what is commonly known as hae cho in Chinese cuisine. The only difference was that the fillings beneath the thin and crispy skin of beancurd sheets were crab instead of prawn.

The insides were packed with crab meat, diced water chestnuts and even bits of lard! Certainly the best crab nuggets of any sort I've ever had.

We had an order of har gou after seeing that the menu included dim sum, but after trying them, we knew we've had much better.

One of the signature items that Chandrphen Restaurant is known for is their half century famous barbequed chicken. It was a salt, garlic and pepper flavoured chicken with a delicious salty paste (can't tell what went in there) that really made the bird. While nothing mind blowing, it was a pretty good roasted chicken.

To add on, we had fish maw stir fried with eggs and bean sprouts. A dish what worked on a nice medley of textures from the separate ingredients combined and was probably the most lightly salted dish we had here.

Dessert was black sesame tang yuan in ginger soup. What we loved about it was the thin skin of the dumplings that threatened to burst and unleash the hot black sesame paste fillings when you bit into them. The other pleasant surprise was that the soup was made from spicy old ginger which warmed the stomach.

The variety of dishes here were quite astounding. We've just scratched the surface of what Chandrphen had to offer. This will be one of those places I'll look forward to if I visit Bangkok again.

Thai styled scotch eggs

These aren't actual bread crumbed and sausage wrapped scotch eggs that we commonly know but are very similar. The salty, spicy and lemongrass infused wrappings taste are possibly fish paste. Tasted like otah or fish cake with diced long beans. There were even miniature quail egg versions.

We got those with century and salted eggs. The salted egg versions were a sodium overload since the skins were already pretty well salted - that's a salty double whammy when they were had with the eggs. Could have been great pairing with rice. Or beer. The century egg versions were on the other hand a pretty good combination of flavours that worked.

Chicken rice from Siam Paragon's Food Hall

This may look like an ordinary plate of chicken rice and one may question, what am I doing eating chicken rice in Bangkok where we supposedly have the best ones back at home. What's worse, a food court chicken rice at that.

I was initially attracted to the stall because I saw cakes of chicken blood. On closer inspection, there's some of those hidden with the pieces of liver on the side. The stall had options to have half the chicken meat deep fried and the other other half boiled.

This was actually pretty damn good! Aside that the boiled chook came nude (no drizzled sauces, nada!), the fried version was crispy and savory, the chicken blood added incentive for me and the rice was on par or even a little bit better than the ones from Pow Sing. Flavorful grainy rice with sufficient and not excessive grease. Good enough to eat on their own. Not a fan of their sauce though.

Still I was pretty impressed. Did I mention that the soup was a robust chicken broth as well that tasted like what one makes at home rather than one gets on the side of a chicken rice order?  All these for 65 baht!

Silom Restaurant, Silom Soi 15, Bangkok

Much like how Colbar is, Silom Restaurant is a Hainanese institution that hails from the colonial era just after World War II (68 years old now it seems) serving Western influenced Asian and Thai Chinese food from another time. With spacious seatings, high ceilings fans and no air conditioning to be found. 

That also meant that some food was done in ways which I didn't quite recognize from the renditions today as well. In any case, this was an interesting breakfast trip

It was the first time I've had breakfast with chrysanthemum tea. What the Thai speaking old proprietress also know as kiat huay.

Then came our oxtail soup which looked and tasted a lot like a peppery clear chicken broth with macaroni. I would never have known it was oxtail until we got to the bits of collagen and fatty chunks of tender meat at the bottom.  I was initially quite apprehensive from the appearance, but it turned out pretty good. I still think it tastes like chicken broth though.

The carbohydrates of choice was sliced bread and butter. This establishment makes a good old school sweet loaf. Sadly these can either not be found or are difficult to find back at home these days. Imagine all that light and airy texture that made you think that you were actually breathing in all the bread rather than eating them. The butter was salted and tasty. Very good with the bread. Or by itself. We had seconds.

 

Their grilled beef steak was way off from what I had imagined. I couldn't tell where the meat came from and it was rather salty and overcooked. The meat was hard and chewy soaked in a onion infused tomato sauce.

What fared a lot better was the ox tongue that was both tender and beefy in a beefy tomato sauce. Enjoyed the soft grainy tongue. Wished that the portions were larger. Those green beans on the side were surprisingly tasty too. Odd that I was actually able to tell the differences between the 2 tomato sauces that were used today. In the past, it would have been just the same to me.