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.

There will be blood.

My guilty pleasure in the heart of Bangkok city. Stall No. 19. This time round, with more blood curds.

I've had this twice in a few days, so I guess that they must be doing something right as a whole even though we probably do better chicken back home. 

My first experience with thunder tea rice

I've been hearing about this stuff for ages and haven't gotten the chance to try them until today. It wasn't as terrible as some people have described it. I've heard it compared to eating grass. Then again, I was also told that this food court rendition probably wasn't assembled with the traditional ingredients and that I might re-think what I feel about them after having tried those. 

The only thing that didn't quite agree with me was the liquorice like flavour in the tea that was otherwise rather mild. The rice and the bunch of chopped up vegetables and nuts certainly made great texture and it's definitely a doable option when one gets tired of all the greasy salty stuff.

The Beef House, Syed Alwi Road

I've been wanting to visit this stall (Gar Lok Eating House, 217 Syed Alwi Road) for the longest time after having heard numerous mentions of their beef balls on multiple occasion over the past years. They are apparently still the only Hakka styled beef ball makers in this country in these years. I hear that each of their beef balls are painstakingly molded by hands.

How were those beef balls you ask?

The surface had interesting looking terrain for one. Those hand molded bovine orbs were also both beefy tasting and impressively springy in texture. I dare say that these are the best beef balls I've ever had so far, bar none. What got me though, was that I couldn't figure out which was the regular beef ball and which were the ones that had tendon in them for a mixed bowl of balls since they tasted pretty much the same together. These were served in a light beef bone broth which didn't quite blow me away, but was unexpectedly 'cheng'.

There was also some rather ordinary mee kia that one could opt amongst a few noodle options. It's the variety with minced meat and lard that can be found in countless second rate yong tau foo stalls all over, but these are probably nicer and they don't clump up. What makes them really good is the garlic spiked chilli sauce which the stall also provides. 

Beef House also serves abacus seeds, another traditional Hakka food item and these were pretty tasty. Springy, lightly chewy like a sort of Asian flavored yam gnocchi with mushrooms and dried shrimp.

The soon kueh had thick chewy skin. They tasted pretty rustic and greasy, but the stuffings of chopped vegetables and mushrooms were generous and tasty.

Ohsumi Japanese Restaurant, Cuppage Plaza

This would be our first attempt at the simplicity of real Japanese shabu shabu down at Ohsumi (5 Koek Road, #03-24/28, Cuppage Plaza, tel : +65 6235 6178) which I've been passing by on multiple occasions and eyeing for quite a while. From what I've heard, this shop specializes in pork which constitutes half of more of their shabu options on the menu. Of course, wagyu can always be had for those with the intent to splurge. We picked the all you can eat pork option since this was a first visit so that we could gorge ourselves and decide if we like it enough to come back another time for their pricier kurobuta or beef equivalents.

The pork shabu came with loin, shoulder and belly cuts along with a platter of vegetable and oddly, two house made meatballs which were actually pretty damned good. Quality of meat served was pretty good; if a little lacking in natural flavour which I was hoping to experience from a clean cooking in a broth that was so lightly flavoured by little but wong bok and a bit of mushrooms. Still, the accompanying house made ponzu and goma sauces along with some unexpected options of sliced chilli padi and finely chopped garlic rescued that. What I was wondering was, are those chilli padi a thing in shabu shabu?

And since it was all you can eat, we hit up another large platter of meat and vegetables after the initial serving along with extra orders of those tasty meatballs. I'm not sure if there had been another time when I had so much pork in a seating, but we were pretty porked out by the time we finished.

The service here was attentively polite and snappy though they seem to tend to forget orders. The feelings are mixed over here. I would like to be back for another shot at something else, but it's easily a triple digit bill.

Poulèt vous?

I was initially skeptical about this French themed roast chicken joint / rotisserie (#01-175/176/177, VivoCity, 1 HarbourFront Walk, tel : +65 6376 9087) as it was opened by the people that ran Thai Express. I didn't like Thai Express. And the bunch of other chain restaurants that the group manages. In retrospect, I can see why the place draws such a crowd and that people talk about it. The chicken was pretty decent and I did like some of the stuff we had. Which left me wondering if the quality of the food was consistent across the board for each outlet or did we just get lucky here at VivoCity......

We could also see that what they're trying to do, was to simplify the food setup to let the ingredients shine along with some well managed cooking processes in the kitchen.

Mushroom soup was creamy, smooth and not lacking in flavour. This was actually better than I had imagined so I guess that's a good thing.

I thought that a name like salad de Paris was tacky. Overlooking that, it was a pretty good one. There was the piquant from the olives, fruity sweet and tart from the dried cranberries, fragrant nuttiness from the generous sprinkle of pine nuts along with the chopped up greens that lent a great deal of texture, tossed up very well with olive oil and apricot jam. I was thinking, if the food sucked, I could come back just for this. I swear.

The claim to fame for Poulèt was obviously their slow roasted chicken. It's pretty good. The meat was tender, moist and apart from their brine marination, had no other flavouring. And then the sauce. This cranberry one tasted like it had roux with the dominant flavour being cinnamon. Which was not what I had expected since I had imagined a fruity cranberry jam/compote thing. But I suppose if it had been the latter, it'll mess itself up with the smear of mustard that they had also provided.

The regular sauce option was some sort of mushroom cream which tasted like a less mushroom-y rendition of their soup. It was still rich from the cream and made you feel like you've had enough when you're done with the chicken.

Mash was good. Smooth, velvety machine blended good. It was however not the buttery type.

Dessert was caramelised apple in puffy tart. It was okay.