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.A taste of disappointmentWhen there is a multi-cultural cuisine worthy to be mentioned, Singapore comes to mind immediately. One of the must-eat dishes is the chicken rice, and I am a fan of it; whether it is Singapore chicken rice, the original Hainanese one, or Thais khao-mun-gai, I like them all. Singapore's version is renowned for its refined recipe of Hainanese chicken rice, of which the chicken is prepared in a special process, accompanied with three dipping sauces with dark (sweet) soy sauce, chili and ginger paste, eaten with a bowl of chicken fat immersed fragrant rice. A visit to Singapore without including a meal of chicken rice is probably not having the trip complete.
When Orchard Chicken Rice, opened sometime last year by a local restauranteur, it proclaimed itself The Taste of Singapore; the first dish to sample is her chicken rice. The impression was negative on the first visit last year. The chicken was not tender, and the pale meat was tasteless. The steamed rice with immersed chicken fat was dull. I don't have too much to say about its dipping sauce (although I don't like it), since the fondness of sauce is always subjective; ever some renowned chicken specialty shops in Singapore such as Yet Con and Boon Tong Kee, some likes the sauce but others do not.
I revisited Orchard last week, and, yes, my mistake. The chicken rice was no better then last year's; it was pieces of chicken meat sadly floating on the sea of soy sauce; again the overcooked meat was not tender and was tasteless in nature; I doubted why it is so brave to be named Singapore chicken rice. The cendol and char kuay teow didn't yield a hint of the native Lion City's taste either. I didn't dare to continue another dish as I had to flag the white flag to Orchard.
Orchard Chicken Rice (Taste of Singapore) **
7/F Central World Plaza
4 Rajdamri Road
Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330
Tel.: 02.252.5581
Open daily : 10 am - 10 pm
Pay (food only for two): around THB 500
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Sea in tanks
Advertorial for Kuang Seafood doesn't appear frequently in local medias, probably Kuang doesn't need any! Unlike a seafood diners' trap near Big C Superstore Rajdamri branch, Kuang's offers fresh (and some live) seafood at a reasonable price. Every night Kuang Seafood is packed with local and foreign customers, sharing a night of feast in cheer.
One of my visiting friends is a cockle lover, not only is he quite strict on freshness (of seafood) and hygiene but also he is lazy to travel far from his hotel to eat. In this case Kuang Seafood and my friend are the prefect match. Every time when he is in town, we go to Kuang Seafood for his cockle and seafood dishes. Though the food is far from outstanding but definitely worth every buck I paid. The fare is tended to be of Thai-Chinese accent; stir-fried dishes (incl. curry crab) and steamed fish are all expertly prepared, while the gaeng and tomyum dishes shall give way to Thai restaurants. In Phayathai and Pratunam area, Kuang Seafood is arguably the best shot for inexpensive seafood dining with comfort and quality; however, service maybe a bit sluggish.
Kuang Sea Foods Restaurant ***1/2
107/12 Soi Rangnam
Phayathai, Bangkok 10400
Tel.: 02.642.5591
Open daily : all-day-dining 10 - 2 am
Pay (food only for two): around THB 700 without crab
(live crab THB 600-1,000 each)
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.Affordable luxury lunch deal
Madison is the steakhouse in the Four Seasons Hotel, which offers luxury beef cuts such as Matsuzaka and Kobe to Wagyu and USDA Prime, prepared in an American twist. It is one of the most luxurious steakhouses in Bangkok, and arguably the best in the 90's when the Four Seasons Bangkok was the Regent Hotel.
A meal for two at Madison may cost a local junior manager a month of his salary, say THB 20,000 with a bottle of nice wine, or half of the price without wine. Luxury does sometimes come with promotions, during weekdays Madison offers a tempting sixty-minute business luncheon deal, which is a 2-course lunch set below the mark of one thousand Thai baht, including Madison's renowned all-u-can-eat salad bar. It is a good chance for non-regular customers to sample Madison food and decide if it is justified to pay a luxury price for a-la-carte or dinner on another occasion.
Two weeks ago I revisited this once talk of the town steakhouse in Bangkok with an American foodie friend during lunchtime. The 3-course lunch set, THB 890++, consists of a soup or the all-u-can-eat salad bar, a main course with choices, and a desert with choices. It is a fairly good deal at this classy grill room. However the food didn't live up to expectations; the salad bar isn't as 'wow' as before, choices cut back and quality declined, for instance, scallops in one of the salad dishes had an artificial texture and tasted bland. Imagine the taste of an eatable rubber or Japanese fake scallops those kids eat! For mains I opted for pan-fried sea bass and it was quite good; but my friend wasn't as lucky as me. His grilled sirloin steak in black pepper sauce didn't have a decent beef flavor and was not tender, though not over-cooked. He described it as coffee-shop quality. The dessert, a creme burlee, was fine.
The food quality and taste aren't as good as last time I visited Madison, which was two years ago.
Madison ***1/2
Four Seasons Hotel, Bangkok
155 Rajdamri Road
Pratumwan, Bangkok 10330
Tel.: 02.126.8866
Open daily : breakfast 6 - 10:30 am, lunch 12 noon - 2:30 pm, dinner 6 - 10:30 pm, Sunday brunch 11:30 am - 3 pm
Pay (3-course lunch set without drinks): THB 890++
(a la carte 3-course around THB 8,000 without drinks)
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.Fusion or confusionA visiting friend stayed at Le Meridien Hotel on Surawong Road. We did dinner pretty late after a day of business meetings and a little bit of shopping. At almost 10 pm, most decent restaurants were closed. Since choice was not on our side and we were pretty hungry, for convenience we picked a bar, cum restaurant, across the street (from his hotel) to comfort our stomachs.
It was Baruza, a bar, a beer house, a Thai restaurant (proclaimed traditional Thai cuisine), a steakhouse and a Japanese fusion eatery under the same roof, all dishes cooked by the same chef. The interior is very Tokyo's Shinjuku feel (as it is investment from Japan), and the bill is of Tokyo standard - in Bangkok this means quite pricey.
We opted for Thai food that Baruza proclaimed is traditional and ended up worse than any tourist-palate-friendly standard, with a lack of any trace of authentication. I wonder if the chef uses purified sugar in stead of palm sugar in the kitchen. We ordered six dishes for a table of three persons (my visiting friend, my personal aide, and me). We started with somtum Thai (spicy shredded raw papaya salad, THB 130+); the salad was decorated with a piece of lettuce that made it seems funny, and taste lacked of any depth, not pungent hot, but very salty. Next dish was tord mun goong or deep-fried minced shrimp paste cakes (THB 150+), the color of the shrimp cake was nice, but the texture was too mashed-like, and pork belly seemed to be the main ingredients, not ground shrimp as they should be in a good balance. The next dish, was stir-fried chicken fillet with cashew nuts, for THB 220+ the portion of chicken and cashew nuts was thrifty, and the taste was ultra MSG enhanced.
We almost would like to leave the table to keep our taste-buds from suffering, but we needed to finish our order. We asked for fried fish, like the popular sea bass or grouper, but to no avail. The only fish available there was tabtim fish. It is a kind of fresh water fish developed locally by CP Farms and the cost is around THB 40 per fish at Tesco Lotus; decent restaurants don't have tabtim fish on the menu, while open-air pochanas or khao tom joints may offer it at around THB 100 to THB 150 per fish. At baruza it was THB 390+. The deep-fried tabtim fish appearance made me think of an over-sized cockroach, deep-fried in overnight cooking oil! Before we were free to have a cup of coffee, we needed to finish two more dishes, tomyumgoong (sour and spicy soup with prawn, THB 220+) and stir-fried seafood in yellow curry sauce (THB 290+). The tomtumgoong again had lack of depth in taste and was quite salty; the stir-fried seafood in yellow curry sauce would be better renamed to stir-fried vegetables in yellow curry sauce.
After dinner we went to Starbucks, the three of us never thought that drinks and pastry at Starbucks can be such a treat!
Baruza Restaurant **
135/18 Surawongse Road
Bangrak, Bangkok 10500
Tel.: 02.634.4433
Open daily : 11 - 1 am
Pay (food only for two): around THB 1,300 (Thai food)
