Zanotti, Bangkok

This was a pretty disappointing dinner. I suppose I had been expecting more since this was suppose to be a talked about place and I had the idea that if it's so much on the wire, there has to be something about them that was great. The only thing about Zanotti that looked appealing was the ambiance.

I didn't like the way starters were pre-made. The porcini and mushroom soup along with the eggplant with anchovies along with the amuse bouche were served so quickly that I hadn't even touched the first loaf from the bread bowl before they all had arrived. Lukewarm.  There was a primi piatti described as a creamy lamb pasta that was creamy in neither taste nor texture. The lamb had also lost all it's natural flavour drowned in rosemary. Drowning food in rosemary is incidentally one of my pet peeves.

Their Castelmagno cheese risotto wasn't something I could get exited about as well. It became a little two dimensional before long. This I suppose was not their fault.

There were too much wait staff standing around and service was at best, ineffective.

Such a pity and waste of time.

 

A death of Spiderman in Bangkok

I bought this Krispy Kreme donut solely because it was amusingly dressed up to look like Marvel's iconic web slinger. I had no idea what flavour it was. I just wanted to eat it. Hahahaha......

 

So there you go, I've taken a bite and drew first blood on the jaws of Peter Parker. I win.  It was a red chocolate coated donut with strawberry jam fillings.

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.