Breakfast at McD in BKK

I was duped into getting the pork porridge from McD. For some reasons, I had the idea that it would be porridge with real sliced pork from their tiny picture on the menu but it turned out to be chopped up pork patty that they were using for their McMuffins. Which I had already gotten a double.

It didn't taste bad at all. In fact, I kinda enjoyed it even. The porridge was light tasting, had a faint aroma that might have been sesame oil and was salted by those pork patty bits. The double McMuffin was just that. I just like to get those in my belly once in a while.

Nara Thai Cuisine, Siam Paragon

We had intended to visit Nara this trip and as chance would have it, we stumbled upon the restaurant at Siam Paragon (G/F Siam Paragon Shopping Centre, 991 Rama I Road). Saved us a walk down to Central World.

We ordered a bunch of stuff which we've never tried previously. Like some surprisingly delicious larb tord. The menu described them as Northeastern spicy fried pork balls. These were crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. They tasted a lot better than they looked and they didn't look bad at all.

In the interest of a balanced diet, some cowslip creeper flowers stir fried in oyster sauce for greens. This was quite tasty.

There was coconut rice on the menu. We ordered a serving to see if it tasted like nasi lemak. It did, except that it wasn't salted at all.

That's their khao pad samunprai - butterfly pea fried rice with some herbs. There were peppercorn and lemon grass and that mild flavour from the butterfly pea which I don't know how to describe. This had more flavour than I thought.

Their spring rolls in tamarind sauce was okay. But it was also the weakest link for this meal. There was pork and bean sprouts in them. The sauce wasn't as vibrant as I had imagined.

Back in T&K Seafood we had a same dish of steamed sea bass in chilli lime sauce. This one doesn't seem to have garlic. Seems a relatively common dish but it's just our second time. The heat and lime was as tasty as the previous one that I even overlooked some of that coriander flavour in the broth.

Paste, Gaysorn Village, Bangkok

Paste is a progressive/modern Thai restaurant located at Gaysorn Village (3rd Floor, Gaysorn, 999 Ploenchit Road, Lumpini,  Bangkok 10330, tel : +66 2 656 1003). Our first progressive Thai food restaurant experience in all our trips here, run by husband and wife chefs Jason Bailey and Bee Satongun

The food can be described as exploratory and experimental to some extents, making use of locally gathered ingredients that used to be a big part of Thai cuisine in the past but have fallen out of use for some reasons in this era. 

What Paste is doing with their food is to re-introduce those ingredients (many herbs and edible flowers) into traditional/aristocratic/provincial dishes while keeping the core flavour profiles of those dishes intact and recognizable.

We had a welcome drink of bael juice.

Patrón Silver tequila, orange liquor, homemade ginger lime syrup & lemongrass powder

And sipped on some ginger margarita while waiting for the food.

amuse bouche

Then came amuse bouche of some pretty looking prawn toasts.

watermelon & ground salmon with crispy shallots, roasted galangal powder

This starter was outstanding. The ground salmon tasted like a sweet and salty fish floss, paired with a chilled sweetness of watermelon balls and umami brine from the pearls of ikura. Excellent with white rice.

coconut cream soup of galangal, chicken with chilli jam & premium plankton paste

Their coconut soup was a rendition of tom kha gai. These guys have a hydraulic coconut press in the kitchen so any milk required can be freshly extracted. Flavour was awesome just like I had imagined with some creamy richness from the coconut and loads of tanginess. The chicken was rolled into cylinders like a roulade and I think they had some coconut meat in them. Not sure where was the plankton paste though.

Shan minority group stir fry of salted and cured pork, fiddlehead fern, turmeric, dried fish & fermented soya beans

This dish of stir fried pork and fiddlehead ferns was new for us. I'm getting a load of savoury, umami flavours with some heat and a lot of crunchy textures from the vegetables and nutty things. Not forgetting a nice aroma from the fermented beans. Those salted pork they mentioned tasted like sausages.

rice, the only normal thing we had

With all those delicious saucy flavours, it would be a crime if we didn't get some white rice to go along. 

pomelo salad of char-grilled Carabinero prawns from Spain, Asian citron, homemade-chilli jam and gapi khoei plankton paste

The flavour bombs continued with their pomelo salad with Carabinero prawns. Paste's elevated and kickass rendition of yum som o. That chilli jam and plankton paste was so good that we would have wanted to lick them off the plate. And yes, those prawns provided a toasty crustacean flavour to the salad, along with a bit of tomalley richness. 

Shitake mushroom white chocolate parfait , with lychee sorbet, chocolate truffles and Thai nectarine

Dessert was some shitake mushroom chocolate parfait. Not really getting the mushroom flavour but the lychee sorbet was awesome. The sorbet was rich and sticky with lychee flavours and bits of meat from the fruit. Maybe a request for individual servings of that sorbet the next time if they still have them.

chocolate truffle with Thai rum

Some mignardises in the form of chocolate truffles, rum-mified.

And an espresso to help ward against the post lunch coma.

Though I don't think it's going to help much.

A khao kha moo for breakfast at Amarin Plaza foodcourt

This iconic dish of stewed pork over rice was from the foodcourt at Amarin Plaza (496-502 Ploenchit Road). One of the advantages of being a tourist is the odd hours that one gets to eat and we happened to be here just as the food was ready and the working crowd wasn't so we kinda had first dips. Tender pork, gelatinous skin, stewed egg and hot steaming rice soaked in the flavourful spiced broth? What a breakfast!

Gaggan, Bangkok

Gaggan (68/1 Soi Langsuan, Ploenchit Road, Lumpini, Bangkok 10330, tel : +66 2 652 1700) is a progressive Indian restaurant by Gaggan Anand, an alumnus of the defunct El Bulli. The restaurant has had a list of accolades including being crowned as Best Restaurant in Thailand and Asia's 50 Best Restaurants for a few consecutive years. On top of that, they're also in the list for The World's 50 Best Restaurants and are currently rank at the 7th. 

There is a mention that Gaggan is the only Indian restaurant in that list of the World's 50 Best. In my opinion, categorizing them as Indian is somewhat a misnomer. While the food is undeniably and mostly influenced by Indian cooking, it is also almost equally Japanese inspired.

We were seated in what they had described as the Chef’s Table where stories and backgrounds of each dish were explained as they were served.

A number of items on the menu has its inspiration from street food so they're meant to be eaten with hands.

The menu is listed by a sequence of emojis. Hence, this would would be the legend from which we would attempt to decode what we eat based on what the emoji could possibly represent - as tenuous as some might be.

I'll be describing what I can remember from the 25 course emoji menu. Though we had been given some introduction to each of the items served, we are revealed only the main components. The rest are mysteries that the magicians do not reveal.

Watermelon emoji : This was a disc of watermelon gelatine on top of some sugar shell I think. It was designed to look like an oyster.

Explosion emoji : This is known as Yoghurt Explosion. Gaggan's signature item and from what the restaurant mentioned, the dish (if that's the right word for it) that earned Gaggan Anand his millions. Haha. 

It's a smooth skinned spherical yoghurt, served on a metal spoon so that it easily slides into your mouth. From there, the explosion of spices, sweetness and of course sour. Maybe cumin too? It reminded me a lot of dahi puri minus the textures. 

Tongue emoji : As this dish was served, the kitchen was playing Lick It Up by KISS. This was served without utensils and we were told to lick up what was on the plate for a bit of fun.

The brown stuff was some mushroom tapenade with truffles and the words are made with green pea puree. I think.

Prawn emoji : amaebi head filled with chilled tom yum cream making this Gaggan's interpretation of tom yum goong. This was excellent.

Flower emoji : I couldn't tell what this was. It tasted like some sort of cookie to me.

Eggplant emoji : I think they said eggplant that was pulverized, dried, powdered and made into cookies with onion chutney. This took five days to make and would last 5 seconds in the mouth.

Chilli emoji : Chocolate shell that's filled with spicy and sour tamarind water. Basically a chocolate pani puri.

Rice bowl emoji : I think they mentioned something about inspiration from idly. I forgot what's the foam and what's the bottom. But it did taste like an idly. For those of you that didn't know, the relation to the emoji is because idly is a steamed rice cake.

Banana emoji : Black sesame base, chicken liver mousse and banana jelly on top. Nice.

Fish emoji : The restaurant mentioned about making this item by accident when they left some sea bass frying for too long. The remnants of the over frying was dried crispy bits of intense flavoured fish. It was then crushed and mixed with nuts and cranberries and stuff to form a granola which was then topped by cream cheese. Very smart, very nice. The fish flavour was quite subtle and still identifiable with a very mild aftertaste. When we were eating it, it tasted like a nice fruity granola with cream cheese.

Martini in glass emoji : This emoji was picked because there wasn't any gin & tonic emoji the restaurant could use. This was Hokkaido uni on a cone of compressed dill with gin & tonic pearls on top. Obviously, this was inspired by an uni temaki. There was cucumber sorbet and something sweet in the cone as well. Couldn't tell what that was. This was delicious.

Sushi emoji : Shoyu marinated otoro with some yuzu zesting served on a dashi meringue. The dish was designed to use chutoro but they only had otoro for their current shipment and it was used instead. Lucky us.

Carrot emoji : A carrot and sugar shell waffle with foie gras mousse inside. This was one of the tenuous links I was talking about for emojis. The carrot did not register anything beyond colour. It was still very delicious though it was largely the sweetness from the sugar and the foie gras mousse that made it so. 

Cup of matcha emoji : Looks like cups in preparation for a drink.

Looked like green tea powder.

Looks like matcha.

Mixing with the brush.

And we were served a chilled, refreshing fruity drink. The green liquid is what they described as Indian gazpacho - made with mint, coriander, green apples and green tomatoes. The powder was made from freeze dried asparagus.

Meat and bone emoji : This was an Iberico pork vindaloo.

The pork vindaloo was made into a little parcel, breaded with panko and fried - just like tonkatsu. Served with a dab of mustard and sauerkraut paper.

Bowl/wok with orange contents emoji : This was called uncooked curry. Coconut gelato, raw scallops, fried shallots, chilli oil and some leaf that tasted like curry.

Hotdog emoji : The emoji was suppose to represent sheesh kebab which were those brown lollipops. The "kebab" was served with some kind of mango chutney leather which are the dark patches of "leaves".

Chicken emoji : Chicken skin with shimeiji mushrooms. Think the skins were baked.

Fire emoji : This began with a little bit of theatrics. The kitchen was darkened and a bunch of stuff on a tray were set on fire.

From the embers, packages were retrieved and put onto our plates.

Beneath the burnt packages was banana leaf which hid fish! The green stuff was something they called Bengali mustard and it contained coriander.

But I finished it and liked it.

Black circle emoji : something in a charcoal batter that's fried like tempura. I couldn't tell what it was as it was gooey inside. This black dish is a main stay at Gaggan. The only thing that changes for this particular item is what's in the black batter.

Taco emoji : Lobster in a rice flour pancake that's suppose to be a dosa. The lobster was prepared in some tomato butter sauce which made it essentially some kind of butter lobster. Delicious.

Rose emoji : The first of desserts start here. It was served in a wooden box.

The box opens to unveil roses which are made of beetroot with some cookie below the petals. That's all I could tell.

Clinking wine glasses emoji : A milk cookie of sorts that had fillings made with muscat and reisling grapes. Both are floral scented grape varietals that are used to make sweet wines.

Lemon emoji : ice cream flavoured with mustard - or so I had assumed mustard. As this was served, a song sung by the Minions was played.

Peach emoji : Last dessert item that came in a box.

Some sort of peach jelly and cream with some cookie/fritter at the bottom. It tasted much better than I had described it.

At the end, a little bit of explanations were attempted with an update of the menu that included some key ingredient descriptions.  The only thing that I didn't see coming was goat brain. Hahaha!