May 18, 2005
Trader Vic's Sunday Brunch
Trader Vic's
Marriott Resort
On the Chao Phraya
Tel: 02 476 0022 ext 1416
It was a Sunday following a quiet Saturday, brought on by a very un-quiet Friday night and thus unusually I awoke bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on a Sunday morning, and quickly decided a good lunch would be in order. Being fond of jazz, I headed for the jazz brunch at Trader Vic at the Marriott Resort on the river. I checked on the internet for details and found a Marriott Thailand internet site and thus booked by email.
It is not often that I even get to the river let alone over to the other side. It was a journey that I would not want to do in traffic. However it turned out to be a pleasant Sunday drive, even if it was quite a bit further then I expected. Incidentally we came back by Marriott boat to the Taksin Bridge which connects to the Skytrain but we walked up to the main road and caught a cab. The free boat trip back was the first time I have actually been on the Chao Phraya River, so a bit of an adventure it was too!
But back to the actual visit. My first impressions at the Marriott were not good. There were no signs to tell us where to go and although a hostess-type girl did direct us, it was quite a long way from reception to Trader Vic’s and the odd sign would have been reassuring! When we arrived in the restaurant, it was total confusion. There were no greeting staff and as I had booked, I was keen to make some kind of contact with somebody! In the end I asked a waiter at the buffet and finally a girl appeared and showed us to a table in a side room. Maybe I had booked late, but I really did think I had a bad table. I guess the river side tables are at a premium.
The buffet was extensive and to an extent confusing as there were no menus. Fair enough but somebody might have told me the main courses were outside on the terrace! The main buffet area was a good collection, primarily of seafood with a few assorted starter dishes thrown in. There was a good sushi section as well. At the high end there were European oysters, Phuket lobster tails, various smoked and cured salmon and a pruschutto. I had a couple of moderate gos at this buffet before spotting the outside carvery and more. Here there were various joints as well as a couple of cooked dishes, but what caught me eye was foie grass, cooked to order. So I had that then, collected a little rare beef and created my own version of Signor Rossini’s famous dish and very good it was to! On the pudding side the patisserie department had clearly been working hard with some lovely subtle sponge and fruit offerings wrapped in white chocolate, not to mention various other goodies. But for me the piece de resistance was the chocolate fondue machine - a fountain of chocolate to douse fruit in! There was also a not-too-bad cheese board to fill up any holes left in ones intestine!
The booze was included and there was a decent French red and white wine from Lanqodocq as well as cocktails and a free flow of beer. The waitress started of by offering one glass at a time but quickly realised that she was about to spend a couple of hours running backwards and forwards and a convenient bottle was placed within reach. Where I did screw up, was I did not see the Bloody Mary mixing kit in the middle of the buffet area. I found it with the cheese course and had good BM to basically my own specification!
As to the whole experience, the food was difficult to fault since there was a good range of very good food served well. The music was pleasant being easy jazz played well, and the booze flowed reasonably easily. One niggle was that with all this feast including alcohol, there was a charge for water. So my bill was for two meals at 1299 Baht and two waters at 60 Baht, both plus plus. It made the Marriott look very petty. I suppose my only real bitch was that I was stuck in a back room with a view of the garden not the river. From that point of view I may as well have gone up the road to my local five star hotel, and had the same deal without the travel!
Posted by Sam at 2:04 PM | Comments (0)
May 4, 2005
Hu'u bar and restaurant at the Ascot Sathorn road
I'm too sexy for my shirt! Well I wish I was. What that really means is I am too cool! Or should it be so cool! I was pondering on that word cool and that got me to trendy and then to sexy. The point about cool is that like beauty, it is in the proverbial eye of the beholder. I am far too past it to know what is cool today. Well that is what I think and when somebody says cool, I automatically glance at the aircon. There are certain things in my life that need to be cool. They are not my shirt and certainly not my underpants. They are my wine and my beer. So you may well ask where is all this rambling getting me? The answer is to a place so cool that even I knew it was cool. I went to a new club, bar, restaurant whatever! They - the cool people who own it - call it a pre-club and fine kitchen. Pre-club? Something similar to a kindergarten I would have thought. But no it is an impressive room with enough goodies to sink most snotty thirty year olds! So let me tell you about Hu'u at The Ascot (187 South Sathorn Road, Tel: 02 676 6672).
This is a big room in that the front has a high ceiling taking up two stories and the back has the restaurant at one level up whilst the kitchen is behind a glass screen at the bar level. The bar is long and one I immediately wanted to sit at…and did! Above the bar is a bottle storage area in glass and metal with a ladder behind the bar to allow the staff to get to the mass of alcohol stored up there. Of course the ladder is so cool because it is virtually unusable! The colours are dark, the objet d’art expensive, the settees are comfortable, the lighting is minimalist, and the music, through a top end sound system, is loud acid jazz although that moves on as the evening progresses. On the weekends their promotional literature (bumph in none cool-speak) suggests the music is “a hedonistic concoction of acid, deep and jazzy house for pure orgasmic rhythms nocturnally!” That description must have kept some cool person up for nights!
In fact their blurb is so good I was tempted to use it, but then you would have all thought they had other substances at Hu'U which had fried what alcohol has left of my brain.
There is FAB Thursday for those in the fashion, advertising and banking business when leaving your business card (presumably to check you are not a second-hand car dealer) allows you 2 for 1 on Chivas before 8pm. Not that that really matters because there is a 2 for 1 happy hour every night from 5 pm to 8 pm, Well it is not a happy hour, it is twilight madness! If that is not cool enough for you then try the loos!
When I was told about the Hu'U the fact that really got me going was not that it maybe cool but that the chef is from the Savoy of London. Not quite up to the Connaught but pretty high in London's proper hotel restaurant standards. So it was the food I went for, not the over cool air conditioning. I ate in the restaurant on my second visit. But on that first visit I consumed a few snacks at the bar. I had prawns in blankets, thankfully of the pastry kind, and poached ox tongue terrine. Prawns were excellent but the ox tongue seemed to lack enough ox tongue to call it that! Nice idea but needs attention was my summary.
The proper restaurant is nicely laid out and I had a table overlooking the bar. The furnishings are similar to that area although there are some good black and white prints of what looks like statues from Ankor Wat. The music is different up here and they were playing modern jazz of the type I normally try and avoid. Reminded me of the Ronnie Scot Quintet that I had had to sit through in order to get to the all together more fun George Melly!
The menu is in a folder of reading matter including who, how and why Hu'U came into existence. Not a single un-cool capital letter has been allowed to sully the pages. The epicure menu has a good range of starters to “tickle the palate.” We had green New Zealand mussels and a terrine of rock lobster described as won tons, both excellent, inventive and attractively presented. There was an impressive selection of bread including chocolate roll bread that was delicious and not too sweet.
For mains I was tempted by the top item (most expensive) on the menu of pigeon with foie gras and that was really good with nice gamey pigeon and pink goose liver. On had marinated red snapper that certainly looked the part..
The menu is a well put together modern menu which will have something for everybody, including a herbivore. Apart from the usual starters, soups, fish and meat there is also an extensive Asian menu which is not Thai dominant but an extensive cross-section of regional specialities.
The pudding menu caused me the most grief as there were so many things that I wanted. But in the end I had to have the bread and butter pudding and On got lumbered with the cookie monster: a cross between a desert and a cocktail with plenty of alcohol in it!
(There is a pictures of all these dishes on Samworthington.com }
The wine list as you would expect is very serious although despite a host of good clarets there is not a single Burgundy on the list. Many people will say you can spot a good restaurant by it’s house wine. Well here they have a very good range of ten house wines all priced at about 1,200 Baht a bottle which in this town in this type of restaurant is very fair - and there is no plus plus on booze!
I enjoyed my dinner at the Hu'U even if it was a bit quiet as I went on a Sunday evening. There are a few quirks that would give me cause for concern, none the least being there is no dumb waiter between the downstairs kitchen and the restaurant. All the food is carried up through the bar which could be a big problem if the bar does as well as it hopes. The staff were very helpful but mostly helplessly under trained. Okay these problems will sort themselves out I have no doubt. In any event I think Hu'U is worth a detour and the traffic in Sathorn Road to try out some genuinely interesting modern cuisine. As well as that super-cooled bar!
Posted by Sam at 3:32 PM | Comments (0)
