Did Starbucks just attempted to draw me?

It was only when I had gotten my coffee and seen this that I realized that I did not give them a name for my order. So there had to be a way to identify whose coffee this was right?

Ping’s Thai Teochew Seafood Restaurant, Pathumwan Princess Hotel, Bangkok

We were recommended to try the food at Ping's (2nd floor, Pathumwan Princess Hotel, 444, Phayathai Road, Bangkok 10330, tel : +66 2 048 4755) by a friend. The restaurant does Thai Teochew food which sorta reminds me of the things that we had back in Scala previously.

One of the things to order here is apparently their braised fish maw and crab. The soup from what I hear was made with a base of chicken broth infused with the flavours of the ingredients that made the dish. If anyone's wondering, this wasn't the starchy stuff that's thickened with flour. Delicious with and without vinegar.

There was dim sum on the menu so we had an order of siew mai. Pretty decent.

That's fish maw stir fried with tiger prawns. The tomalley from the prawn was the main flavouring agent for the stir fry and had basically infused all the springy fish maw. Need I say more? It's as good as the one at Scala. Wished we had gotten a larger portion.

Ping's does a kickass braised goose web mee pok. Those tender goose web were suck off the bone tender, infused with the flavour of the braising sauce which had also been absorbed by the flat noodles. While I'm generally one for noodles that are firm with a bit more bite, these tender ones totally agreed with me.

Their river prawn vermicelli was also delicious. The restaurant got us a sizeable bug of about 500 grams. The melting tomalley and roe basically glued parts of the vermicelli together into a delicious mess. Like the goose web mee pok, the bottom of the pot was layered with caramelized pork belly slices and little bulbs of garlic which had no doubt lent their flavour to the dish.

Dessert was also kickass. Unassumingly so if I might add. Their coconut jelly was a whole coconut of meat and coconut juice jelly. I had initially thought it to be simply agar agar from the gelatinous appearance but had realized that after the first mouthful that there was much less gelatine involved in it than I had thought. The chilled jelly was pretty much solid coconut juice which melted as soon as you popped them into the mouth.

Their water melon juice was really sweet. Sweetness that made us a little wary, wondering if additional sugar was added.

In retrospect, this was a very satisfying lunch at Ping's. Most of what we had today were good enough by themselves that we'd gladly come back just for those.

Arno's Butcher and Eatery, Chong Nonsi, Bangkok

Arno's was apparently a rather well known frills free steak place (2090/ 20, 3 Naradhiwat Rajanagarindra Rd, Chong Nonsi, Bangkok 10120, tel : +66 2 678 8340). The location is not so convenient as locations for tourists in Bangkok go and it's almost an hour of car ride if you're heading over from somewhere in town during peak hours.

The order process at the restaurant starts with the choice of cuts from their selection. I wanted the 100 day aged rib eye. The guy over at the butcher told me the Arno's Special was that so we went along with it.

After the meats are the other things, including seafood. And after that, it's to the table to wait for the order.

We got some oysters to start. Some Fine de Claire and Tsarskaya.

They had a couple of dressings that were used for their oysters. One's a regular vinaigrette and the other was....well, let's just call it Thai dressing. 

Garlic bread was nice. Great munching while waiting for the rest of the food.

Their lobster bisque was ordinary. While drinkable, it certainly wasn't anything like the one at Morton's. This soup tasted flat.

Their bone marrow had surprisingly little marrow. Would have ordered a few more bones if I had known.

Here's their rib eye. Dry aged and surprisingly ordinary tasting for something that was a special from their butchery.

The flavour of the meat lack the intensity that I had been expecting for something that had been dry aged for such a period. So while they aren't expensive, they aren't impressive neither.

Mashed potato was a little sweet and pretty starchy. Not bad though.

They had on their TV one of my guilty pleasures from the 90s - The Rock. Here's a moment of machismo from Ed Harris in a showdown in the prison shower room.

Provence, Gaysorn Village, Bangkok

We stumbled upon Provence at the basement of Gaysorn Village (999 Phloen Chit Rd, Bangkok 10330, tel : +66 2 656 1438). I suppose it was simply a stroke of good fortune since we did intend to visit them at The Peninsular. Having found this location simply saved us some walking under the sweltering heat.

Sipped on cha yen while waiting for the food to arrive. 

We liked their chive dumplings previously so we had an order of them. These tasted exactly like how they did at The Peninsular. I wonder if they're made from a central kitchen. 

What we were really looking forward to was their special boat noodles. The one that was regular sized and not in the tiny portions that are commonly found around Bangkok.

I don't know if we had imagined it but we though the broth at The Peninsular was thicker - richer. Today's broth had some lime in it. But this was still good that we asked for refills which the restaurant obliged. It was then we realized that the person that did our refills was the lady that offered us refills back at the The Peninsular a couple of years back.

We had kor moo yang- grilled pork neck with glutinous rice. The chilli dip on the side was pretty good.

What was outstanding was a northern Thai khao soi with duck confit. The coconut-y curry was elevated after a squeeze of lime and a handful of chopped onions. In case you didn't know, this dish was served with noodles two ways - boiled egg noodles at the bottom while the ones on top were fried.

The gracious host of the restaurant pushed their dessert cart over and we couldn't say no.

So we ended up with some sweet mango and lavender ice cream. A very satisfying sweet ending.

An akauo kasuzuke set from Nakajima Suisan

I had heard good things about Nakajima Suisan's grilled akauo kasuzuke. One of their fish options marinated in sake lees. Since they were out all parts of their tuna, it was a good time to give this other fish a try. I tried searching briefly and could only discover that akauo is known by a couple of names - Pacific ocean perch or Matsubara's red rockfish. I'm not sure which.

I liked this. There was a sweetness and an aroma I'm presuming from that kasuzuke. A bit more bones from this fish than I normally enjoy dealing with but that won't be a deal breaker.

Ristorante Luka, Tanjong Pagar Road

In our shores, there are only a few Japanese chefs here that do Italian food. Presumably at some point, names get recycled. Luka (18 Tanjong Pagar Road, tel : +65 6221 3988) is by Takashi Okuno - formerly from L'Operetta and Truffle Gourmet.

There're a few claims to Luka and one of them is their house made wagyu bresaola. A bresaola that didn't look like anything that's air dried, salted or aged to my untrained eyes. In fact, there's quite a bit of moisture on the sliced beef and if I hadn't ordered it, I would have thought it was carpaccio. 

Not so much fat in the meat so not much flavour as well - not to mention that there was mound of ricotta secretly hiding under the beef waiting to mess up your palate when you're trying to taste the "wagyu" in that "bresaola". Didn't work for us at all. 

This was smoked egg, wagyu and uni. A dish that should win by virtue of ingredients, assuming that the said ingredients are of good quality. It was tasty. The smoked flavour in the egg was dominant followed by some floral creaminess from the sea urchin. Not sure where that torched wagyu came in though.

We liked the fresh tasting sesame crusted pretzel that came with their whipped bottarga cream. A bottarga cream that hit more like smoked hummus rather than bottarga with cream.

That's fried wakasagi. A small fish like smelt. Those white stuff they drizzled over tasted like some sort of lime aioli. Very lime-y and well done - also something that was bordering on overwhelming the flavours from those little fried fish

There's trippa. Probably alla Luka. Spiced tomato base, cannellini beans and perhaps mirepoix together with honeycomb tripe. The texture of the tender tripe was good but it didn't have much flavour. Couldn't really taste the cheese but we were getting bits of fried garlic. While this was definitely still a hearty rendition, the one at Pietrasanta kicked more ass.

I had to compare their risotto Parmigiano. With the one that was leagues ahead at Enoteca L'Operetta done a la minute with aged Parmigiano Reggiano that blew this out of the water easily.  This flavour of this plate was flat and a little sad. The drizzles of the sweet balsamic vinegar could have saved it but there was too little to go around. I should have known better. 

Luka has an aglio e olio with uni cooked using bavette. There was sea urchin that were cooked with the noodles and a few small slivers laid over the finished plate. In an attempt to describe this - there're definitely flavour from the sea urchin but it's not the oceanic briny kind from the raw uni. It's earthier if that made sense. We were getting aroma from garlic as well as some umami from the shaven bottarga. Unexpectedly addictive.