July 19, 2005

Venezia, Soi 11 Sukhumvit

Venezia
24 Sukhumvit Soi 11
Bangkok 10110
Tel: 02 254 6655

Italian restaurants tend to fall into two categories. Those that set themselves out as a predominantly pizza pasta joint and those with grander aspirations. Venezia is in the second category. It is in a large room with flowers, murals and wine racks rather than a brick oven and tiled floor. We were drawn by the knowledge that it stayed open all afternoon and the fact that we knew Chef/Patron Vitro. Formerly he worked for his mother in La Piola, that was on Sukhumvit Soi 13, a family-run Italian restaurant with a great reputation.

This is a comparatively new operation and I think that was reflected in the menu. As a new proprietor, Vitro is feeling his way and I thought the menu somewhat limited. Italian yes, but maybe I am just ‘over-Italianed’ in this town of Italian restaurants. There was no dish that jumped out and said to me – TRY ME! All the usual dishes were there and there were three rucola salads with rock lobster, beef fillet and porcini mushrooms with prawns, that certainly looked innovative. It was just I did not fancy a salad. In the end I ordered mussels and clams in a tomato and chili sauce with white wine. They were good and my early reservation was with the chili bit. As soon as I see chili on a menu in Thailand I assume the worst and I suppose I am slightly paranoid about that! But this dish had the chili under control - spicy yes, but it did not destroy one’s taste buds. A good starter I thought.
For a main I went for the special of lamb knuckle. This was very good and very similar to confit. It had been cooked for a long time and was soft but not falling apart. The gravy was heavy and full of flavour. It was a pleasant dish in which great care had been taken in the production. My companion’s veal was not so good. I am sure the escalope was cooked from frozen. We drew Vitro's attention to this and he was suitably apologetic saying he could not spend all his time in the kitchen. After which he headed to the kitchen and sadly there were no sounds of murder or mayhem nor signs of blood oozing out under the kitchen door! But I am sure that this was a mistake that will not happen again!
We had a very pleasant afternoon with some reasonable food in good surroundings with some amiable helpful staff and Vitro is a good guy!

Posted by Sam at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)

Great American Rib Company, Soi 36

Great American Rib Company
32 Sukhumvit soi 36
10110
Tel: 02 661 3801

Let me put my hand up straight away and say ribs do not excite me, Mexican food leaves me unimpressed and I regard barbeques as best avoided. So the invite to try some Mexican food at a rib restaurant specialising in barbeques was accepted with some reservation.
The Great American Rib Company has only one branch, although others have been planned and talked about, but none has actually happened. Soi 36 is nearly opposite Soi 55 Thonglor so this location is bang in the middle of the smart housing of mid Sukhumvit. This is a large site with a big outside area as well as a smaller air-con restaurant and there is a car park. The site contains various other buildings including accommodation for the owners and storage, and more importantly three smoke houses. I certainly took away the impression that this site has been set up as headquarters for a few more Great American Rib stores.
We had been invited to try out the Mexican food and were each given a combo plate. I have to say the food was tasty enough and the Californians around me who live on Mexican food (according to them) seemed to think it was all pretty good. We then all decided we could do with a little more - stupid! So a Texas triple combo arrived with half a rack of ribs, pulled pork and half of a Bar-B-Que chicken. And just to make certain that was enough, there was a portion of "Pastramied" pork tenderloin with horseradish sauce. I have to say I rather enjoyed all this food. We were sitting in the garden area, several margaritas were consumed and the food was tasty and very edible. My usual crack about "ribs are pork chops with the meat removed" was, for once accepted, because, of course, that is what it is - slave food. In other words they are the left overs from the main kitchen. One of the reasons I was enjoying this place was Rob the head man. He clearly has a passion for his food. He was rushing back and forwards asking us what we thought. Afterwards I had several drinks at the bar with Rob and we discussed all kinds of useless subjects, but to be sure, Rob is a man with his heart in his ribs (so to speak!)
The Great American Rib Company is a nice location and with a good outdoor area serving as good an American Bar-B-Que as you will get in this town. So if that is your desire, go try it for size - and those Margaritas ain't bad either!!

Posted by Sam at 11:22 PM | Comments (1)

July 13, 2005

V9 at The Sofitel, Silom, Bangkok

V9,
Sofitel,
188 Silom Road
Bangrak, 10500
BANGKOK
Tel :02 238 1991
Open 6 pm to midnight

I had the sunset brunch on Sunday a month or two ago at V9 and vowed I would go back for the tasting trees. That I did this week. Confused: I will explain.
V9 is on the 37th floor of the Sofitel on Silom road. As you can imagine the view over Bangkok is quite spectacular. But there is much more to this cutting-edge operation than the view. This is described as a wine market, bar and restaurant, with the emphasis placed on the wine bar part of the operation. Wine Connection has a store on the outside of the restaurant, so wine is available at something close to the retail price as opposed to the restaurant price. In addition there is a genuinely big selection and some very different wines on offer.
On Sundays as opposed to a Sunday Brunch at lunch time they run a brunch-style event from 5 pm to 9 pm where you can watch the sunset over Bangkok from this exclusive eerie. I enjoyed the brunch although it was fairly typical of 5-star brunches around town. In particular I was impressed with the cheese board. The whole brie had clearly been put out at opening time and by the time I got to it at 8 pm it was perfect - just beginning to run. The Camembert was the same. Of such joy to find cheese like that in Bangkok!
However back to the tasting tree: these are menus served on a tree of tiered plate holders allowing one to pick at the dishes at will. There are four main trees: a V9, French, Thai and Chefs, as well as a desert tree, all with six dishes included. They come in two sizes - small recommended for 1 or 2, and large for 3 or 4. I was tempted by them all but settled on the Chefs tree with dish one: scallops and squid salad, two: pizza topped with stir fried lamb, roquette and melted mozzarella, three: Crab mouse with caviar sauce, four: Smoked salmon and crab salad, five goat cheese ravioli and six: marinated kangaroo with foie gras. They were all good with a good selection of varying tastes. I thought the crab mouse was the best, with both the little pizza and the ravioli getting a highly recommended star.
We had this as a starter, be it a large one, for two. It could have easily been a meal for one. The rest of the menu is interesting without being that extensive. But as can be seen from the tree I chose this can be comfortably called inventive modern cooking. This month they have a special tuna menu with 3 starters and 3 mains. Three of the options are Ahi Tuna Tartar (quail egg, shallots, garlic, pine nuts, sesame, chili oil, mint and basil), seared peppered tuna loin (mixed Asian field greens) and one that tempted me: fish and chips (tuna "tempura," crispy potatoes, black olive oil). But just as we finished the tree, the Chef, Boris Cuzon, appeared. Boris is a pleasant chap from Brittany via a ten year stint in L.A. We passed a few agreeable minutes discussing the finer points of Bangkok's better cuisine before his bleeper summoned him back to his stoves. We went for two of the simpler dishes as mains. On wanted steak so she had beef tenderloin and I had roasted venison with mustard sauce. The venison was sliced and placed on polenta with mushrooms. The sliced meat had been folded through the sauce so the hot mustard shone through in the eating, but this was not to its detriment. Not a bad dish to eat whilst viewing Bangkok's night vista from above! I enjoyed watching all those souls stuck in the Silom and Sathorn road traffic!
I had to have a cheese board to follow and good it was too but not quite up to the standard of that cheese on the previous Sunday! We enjoyed a couple of bottles of decent wine. The white, Chateau Hostens Picant 2001 from Sainte-Foy, Bordeaux, was a very revealing wine. It was a big wine, with almost too much flavour to drink on its own. And of course I ordered it partly as an aperitif. Not too bad to start with, but by the end of the bottle, it was WOW, what am I drinking! I looked up the Chateau website and it is obviously a revamped Chateau with high aspirations and worth trying. Here it was a very reasonable 1,220 Baht (++) for such a good wine. For the red I had a good Cotes du Rhone and again this was a very big wine.
Later on in the evening V9 takes on a more hip image with a dreaded DJ set loose with vinyl, hip hop and acid house. That side I did not see or hear that side of it, but as an eatery it is well worth a decent detour to try out those trees - and drink some decent wine at sensible prices.

Posted by Sam at 12:58 PM | Comments (1)

July 6, 2005

Aldo's at the Ascott, Sathorm Road

Aldo's
The Cascade Club,
The Ascott
187 South Sathorn Road
Bangkok 10120
Tel: 02 676 6969
Website:

I was told about Aldo's some time ago but then Hu'u came into the picture and I made the common mistake of presumption. How, I thought, could the Ascot have two top establishments? Of course I now realise that I was wrong. That is after I was again reminded about Aldo's, this time by a restaurateur and when I needed somewhere to lunch with Lord Toad. So once again I took a taxi to the Ascot, but this time took the lift to the 6th floor Cascade Club and walked up to the pool level and found Aldo's.
The moment we walked through the door we knew we had a result. It just looked like a good restaurant and we were there at lunch time, and it had a good sprinkling of customers. This is a big modern room with glass walls on three sides and big bar area at the far end covering about half the space. This is a wine bar and more, and I can imagine it is a lively place early doors. We sat in the main restaurant area near the kitchen with chairs, as opposed to banquet seating against the rear wall.
Menus and wine list were produced quickly and a bottle of wine ordered before we studied the menus. There were two menus; an a la carte and a list of daily specials from soup to pasta to cooked dishes and the like. Both menus are subject to change and revision according to what is available. We ordered a lobster and avocado salad and Vitello tonata. It was now that another presumption I had made, I know not why, was torpedoed. Somehow I thought this was an Italian restaurant. But Herve appeared from the kitchen and seeing what looked like two players came to greet us. Herve is from Marseille in the south of France. The clues as to the owners origins were all over the menu in bouillabaisse and coq au vin. Now with the boss as a guide it was easy to work out our main courses and I ordered coq au vin and Toad ordered salmon papilotte. I think it is unnecessary for me to say the food was first rate and well produced. Hervre runs his restaurant from the kitchen with regular forays to check on the punters. This is a man who is very serious about food and has worked in one of Paris's top restaurants the three-Michelin-starred Grand Vefour.

So, of course, it was downhill all the way once we had got paly with Herve. We had plenty of foody chatter as he dashed in and out of his office. For desert he produced a magnificent creation of fresh raspberries with sabayon on top. And this was after one of the best cheeseboards I have seen in Bangkok. The final chapter was a couple of large 15 year old Calvados.
Herve admitted that the restaurant does have an Italian feel since that cuisine is without doubt the most popular in Bangkok. The wine list is heavily skewed towards Italian wine. The restaurant is described as a Mediterranean bistro and wine bar - not a bad description although I think this is not a bistro, not in my book anyway.
The name comes from the painter Aldo Luongo whose prints are displayed on the walls. They are quite wonderful expressive impressionist prints and you can look at more on his website:. I show a print from this range that I liked. The main picture in the restaurant is An Evening at the Ritz which I photographed but decided the quality did not do it justice.
Aldo's is certainly a splendid place to have lunch and it is open all afternoon. I am sure dinner would be just as memorable!

Please note Herve has now left and is at le Beaulieu

Posted by Sam at 3:10 PM | Comments (0)