399
.
Experimental doughChu, probably from the name churro, the snack joint that has been claimed to be the only churros specialty in Bangkok, had its debut a year ago at Asok intersection's Exchange Tower. Churro, a.k.a. Spanish doughnut, a deep-fried dough snack that is very popular in Spain, Latin America, and the southern border States of the US, especially in Southern California, where Latin Americans have a strong hold in the areas. It is probably the Spanish answer to Thailand's infamous (an enemy to health conscious diet) bak-tong-kou, and Hong Kong's yau-ja-gwai, both go well with the jok (congee) for breakfast.
Chu also claimed to have a chocolate specialty, with the ingredients sourced from France. I found that the 58% dark chocolate drink was lacking in aroma, though it was strong enough for a chocolate lover like me. The hot chocolate got along well with my order of churros with cinnamon icing, which was nicely deep fried, crispy outside, but watery soft inside without a little chewy texture of the dough; the dough was lacking of the aroma that it should have. Perhaps the chef should take a Christmas vacation to Los Angeles, which is the temple of churros in the US, to sample some.
As for the other desserts and drinks, some were good while a few were horrible. I hope that the owner doesn't run an experimental kitchen and have customers paid to be his guinea pigs.
Service in Chu is slow, robot style and pretentious.
French 58% hot chocolate, THB 120+, rich but not aromatic! 
bratwrust and onion sandwich, THB 110+ half, stingy serving of sauteed onion, pale
bratwrust (not grilled) chopped into CN style small pieces, someone who doesn't eat
sandwich did this, so we can tell how much they understand about making a sandwich! 
churros, THB 90+, a familiar name, but not the familiar texture and taste! 
Chu chocolate truffle cake, THB 135+, no comment, just won't eat it again!
facebook crepe cake with berry sauce, THB 120+, the sauce is better than the cake ..
vanila mikeshake, THB 120+, I like it, because it has a very '60's Dairy Farm' taste
dark chocolate, THB 120+, not ugly, simply Chu has a good ice cream supplier
Chu **1/4
Unit 204, 2/F Exchange Tower
388 Sukhumvit Road
Klongtoey-nua, Bangkok 10110
Tel.: 02.663.4554
Open daily : 7:30 am (Sat & Sun 9 am) - 9 pm
Pay (food only for two): around THB 500
375
.Fail to danceWhen I was a little child, sometimes I would sneak into the kitchen to cook my favorite dish - deep-fried chicken pieces. They were actually leftovers (steamed chicken) prepared from the previous meal; I took them out from the fridge, rubbed and marinated the chicken pieces with soy sauce, deep-fried them in the sea of running oil; seasoned them (yes again, so you know how awful they tasted!) with additional soy sauce and salt; when done, I poured some seasoning agent on them, so my master piece was a dish of salty meats; the only taste my taste buds could detect was - salt. I ate them while watching my favorite TV program, Sesame Street. Later when my taste buds gained strength, I realized that it was a little crime in culinary means.
Shun No Mai, a Japanese show kitchen style buffet restaurant, bravely opened in Thonglor few months ago, reminds me of that mischief I did in my early childhood.
At THB 680++ per person (all-you-can-eat) it is not difficult to please diners even if Shun No Mai just serves mediocre food; the inexpensive price tag helps her to gain back some credit; however, its raw fish, or sashimi, quality is worse than those you can get for fifteen baht at Klongsan, and cooked food used low grade ingredients; meats are pale and tasteless. The only taste was from the heavy-weight seasoning sauce.
My friend, who was also in the table, proved that the sashimi was lacking freshness with a result that he suffered a food-poisoning kind of diarrhea that night. I was okay since I didn't touch those raw stuff.
Shun No Mai, literally dance of the season, did not have the food dance, but had our colon dance!
Shun No Mai Japanese Buffet Restaurant **1/4
Floor G Opus Tower
139 Thonglor Soi 10
Soi 55 Sukhumvit Road
Wattana, Bangkok 10110
Tel.: 02.714.7589
Open daily : lunch 11 am - 2 pm (set lunch),
dinner 5 - 10 pm (buffet and a la carte)
Pay (food only for two): around THB 1,350
366
.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
361
.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)
238
.Yes, we can! (Really?)
Some restaurants need not to pursue a culinary excellency to survive in the game, if they have unlimited fresh fund from the holding companies or from their families and armed with massive pr works. Unfortunately such scenario is overflowed in Bangkok's restaurant business.
Obama's presidency campaign might have borrowed an idea from those Bangkok's high-so restaurateurs - "Yes, we can"! There is a trend that local high-so second and third generations like to open their experiment restaurants to see if "they can" or not!
Kitchen Paradiso, owned by a quality spa products supplier and exporter also one of my favorite aroma massage oil brands, rolled out her debut in the Erawan Plaza Bangkok many years ago. The first time I visited there was 4 years ago, that was my only attempt on her food.
Last year Kitchen Paradiso moved to Siam Paragon. The location is so much better when compares to her old shop. Well-off students and lost tourists may settle at Kitchen Paradiso while the opposite Starbucks is full. Like I encountered few days ago, unfortunately!
duck leg confit failed to reach the mark! i didn't feel like sample confit that were carefully prepared in timely process the Gascony way! this one is bland, no layer of flavor, and lack of texture, i wonder if the chef deep-fried it before serving to yield crispy touch instead of slowly poached in oven then stored the leg in her fat .. strange some reviews claim that Kitchen Paradiso a duck specialty restaurant (thanks to paid pr works!) but my found is far from authentic. Kitchen Paradiso **3/F the Siam Paragon991/1 Rama I RoadPathumwan, Bangkok 10330Tel.: 02.610.9709Kitchen ParadisoOpen daily : 10:30 am - 9:30 pmPay (food only for two): expect THB 3,000
214
.Heat in your walletCafe Chilli, a mall-attached Thai restaurant delivers earthy Issan delicacies in Siam Paragon, for the deep pocket high-so diners and tourists. Food quality and taste do not justify with the bill I paid.
If Kum Poon @ Cental World Plaza is still there (CWP were burnt by red-rioters on 19-May), I wouldn't have revisited Cafe Chilli yesterday.
Cafe Chilli **
Ground floor, Siam Paragon
991 Rama I Road
Prathumwan, Bangkok 10330
Tel.: 02.610.9877
Cafe Chilli
Open daily : 11 am - 9:30 pm
Pay (food only for two): around THB 2,000
