November 29, 2005

The Med: All day dining At The Westin

The Med
Westin Grande Sukhumvit
259 Sukhumvit Road
Bangkok 10110
Phone 02 207 8000

For those of you who read this site regularly you will know that my favourite meal is lunch - a decent lunch that starts around 2 pm and goes on until most people are thinking about dinner. But there is one big problem in this town (Bangkok). There are very few places that will pander to my desire. There are places which will allow one to feed on, providing one arrives around 1.30 pm, but very few proper restaurants that will actually welcome one at 2.30 pm. The only two I can think of are Pomodoro and Chesa. So you can imagine how I felt when I found the Med, at the Westin Hotel on Sukhumvit Road (next to Robinson's) actually promoting itself as an all-day restaurant.
This hotel effectively starts on the seventh floor and that is also where the Med is. I am afraid first impressions were not that favourable as a ‘canteen’ with a fully laid up buffet greeted us. I could see Toad was wondering why he was here, and I was thinking that the convoluted taxi route to avoid the traffic to get here really meant we had to stay. We were seated by the window and asked if we required the buffet or the a la carte menu. There was only one answer as we had both been to buffets that started disappearing around 2.30 pm and it was already 2.15 pm. We also asked for the wine list. The service was good and friendly and I was getting the sense that despite the authentic canteen feel, this might not be a bad place after all. The sighting of a farang chef had helped. We started off with goose liver as one starter and I had smoked salmon with king crab with an avocado sauce. Both were very good with Toad almost drooling over his goose liver. In an attempt to slow service down a bit, we both had ordered a plain Caesar salad as an intermediate course and that was very good as well.

We were now into our stride as we realised that we had indeed come to a half decent restaurant with good food and sensible staff who were handling calls for another bottle of wine with suitable aplomb. For mains, Toad went for salmon and asked for it poached, a cooking style not mentioned on the menu. And it arrived poached and with the promised new potatoes! I had an excellent rib eye steak. When I sniffed away the burger mustard I was rewarded with some decent English. So we had not yet defeated them but we had a final challenge. Grand Marnier Soufflé was on the pud menu as was Crêpes Suzette. Now what I have failed to mention is that there was frantic activity going on all around us as they prepared for a full house and a Thanksgiving Dinner. Yes a soufflé would be a great order to try the patience of the chef. I could just imagine the Chef cursing us roundly in the busy kitchen…but he buckled down and did it very well. So they had beaten us! We could not fault one dish. We had drunk more than enough wine to check that out and they even managed to find a bottle of Calvados to complete the meal. Some canteen!

Posted by Sam at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2005

Le Vendome: Serious French cuisine

Le Vendome Restaurant
267/2 Sukhumvit Soi 31
Bangkok
Tel:(02) 662 0530
Website

Return visit January 2007
I heard Le Vendome had moved from All Seasons Place, so I thought a revisit was necessary … not that I ever need an excuse to go to a good French restaurant.
Before you go, however, take a look at the map on the restaurant's website. I'd hate to see you wandering around on an empty stomach! In reality it is simple enough to find when you appreciate that soi 31 seems to go to the left where the green route comes in, and this restaurant is past the routes next left turn that would take you through to Asoke and Silom Village.
The building itself is interesting, with the kitchen and dining room separated by a large garden that includes a Jacuzzi the size of most swimming pools. A quick peek into the kitchen will tell you how serious the food is here.
The restaurant area is not particularly large, but it is comfortable and well-suited to the atmosphere the place is trying to create. Despite the move, the menu seems to have remained basically unchanged, so comments posted below still apply.
Although the ambience at All Seasons was starchy, the presence of the kitchen some how softened it. At the new place I found the whole operation very 'hi-so'.... those living in Thailand will know what I mean. I might have found it intimidating were I not such an experienced restaurant-goer.
Certainly, the head waiter had that Jeeves-ness, which let you know he thought everything should be done his way. The service was good, but there was the usual confiscating of the wine, and a bit of a sniff when I wanted my wine NOW!
Those gripes aside, this is still a first-class restaurant with, needless to say, first-class prices. Worth a trip, but it's certainly not one for the feint-hearted.

Orginal Review November 2005
Le Vendome has not been around as long as many of Bangkok's better restaurants but it has been around long enough to muscle in on the scene and get some serious respectability.
The restaurant is tucked away at the back of M Tower one of the impressive tower blocks that make up All Season's Place. It is a much smaller room than I expected and entry is through a small bar and then into dining room built round an open glass encased kitchen. At the far end is a piano player. The first table I was given was at the far end near the piano player. In the end I had to move as it was simply too dark to even make a stab at reading the menu, or more importantly the wine list. We were moved back to sit nearer the entrance where something other than night vision goggles sufficed.
The wine list at first sight looked impressive with plenty of very drinkable French wines at sensible prices. Then I noticed all those little crosses and realised the choice was nowhere near like as good as first thought. In fact the French whites were somewhat limited to the better, read more expensive, regions and classifications. In the red wine department there was a good selection of Clarets with a few good Margauxs as well as Petrus and Lafite Rothschild (one of the prettiest Chateaux). We had a Muscadet sur Lie and a very pleasant Cotes du Rhone, Le Clos du Caillou, a '01 that seriously improved the longer it was open.

The menu has to be described as limited, especially in Bangkok, where menus are normally (too) long. The mix was there in eight starters and eight mains and there was a gastronomic menu which I was tempted by and at 1,800 Baht did not look expensive compared to mains running at close to the 1,000 Baht range.
After a neat prawn wrapped in filo as a amuse bouche, I started with roasted veal sweetbreads with black truffle foam, mushroom ragout and green zucchini. This arrived in a deep dish, almost like a soup plate, disguised under a few rocket lettuce leaves. The tastes were great with the mushroom sauce superb and well set off by the odd piece of chopped zucchini. The other starter was a Province-style langoustine and made somebody very happy.
For mains I was a little short of selection options with only 5 meat courses which included pigeon, a choice which seems de rigueur in all top end French restaurants at the moment, then duck breast, rack of Lamb and two beef dishes. There were three fish dishes. All very specially prepared and clever in output I am sure. In the end I went for "braised beef cheek five hours in red wine." This was interesting in that it was a thick lump of beef, a lot thicker than I thought it would be, and it was very moist and very tender. I asked the chef later and it was indeed beef cheek. The other main was "duck breast glazed with honey lavender."
For puds On had pears in white wine, as opposed to the more well-known dish in red wine, and I had an interesting cheese board.
I did get to talk to the French chef in charge Nicol. He seemed a nice enough guy and is clearly trying very hard. I suppose my review is picky but then this place is trying to be a first class French restaurant and to an extent it works that way. It is a restaurant for foodies rather than those you want to impress and there are better restaurants in this town for that. But if you crave good inventive French cooking you could do a lot worse than Le Vendome

Posted by Sam at 9:25 AM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2005

Zanotti in Soi Sala Daeng

Zanotti
21/2 Sala Daeng Colonnade
Silom
Bangkok 10500
Tel: 02 636 0002
Website:

I recently had an email suggesting that I visit Zanotti, because in the opinion of the writer who also claimed Italian heritage, it is the best Italian restaurant in Bangkok. In this town of Italian restaurants that is a very big claim indeed. However I needed little encouragement as Zanotti was already on my list of "must visit" places.
This is a restaurant that looks elegant at first sight. It is located diagonally behind the Dusit Thani, one street back, and convenient for both Silom and Sathorn. The low-slung building and the external awnings make the business look more Italian than Thai and certainly once through the door, the transformation from Asia to Italy is complete. Furthermore it is obviously a busy restaurant. I had booked and I think I would have got a table if I had not, but the reaction and the professionalism of the reception staff upon our arrival was that of an establishment accustomed to handling bookings as a matter of course.
We were seated promptly and bread, water and a tomato amuse bouche were there in a flash. The exclusively Italian wine list was quickly in my hands and a waiter hovered appropriately, just a few tables away, awaiting my order. All very slick and a sign of a busy restaurant with well seasoned staff.

The menus offered a good selection of reasonably typical Italian dishes with the anti pasta section offering a decent range from Mozzarella in Corrozza (Deep fried cheese and anchovies) to pan fried goose liver. And the mains had a goodly range of pizza and pasta as well as fish, grills and veal's liver - one of the few places I have seen this presented as a regular menu item rather than as a special. There were specials and it was there I went for both starter and main course. I had home-made raviolis of duck, veal and rabbit as a starter - which could have been a main, and veal tenderloin as a main. From the main menu On had garlic chilli and olive oil flavoured prawns and then paillard, which is thinly sliced sirloin seared with olive oil. On took one mouthful of her prawns and said "good!" Praise indeed so early and without being asked. I enjoyed my raviolis although in truth I was not sure what was what. The veal tenderloin had a thin breadcrumb crust which was just palatable and I suppose I was neutral on it's effect. But it did add something!
I had only to glance at the desert menu to know there was only one choice - zuppa Inglese. English soup is the name given to this bastardisation of an English trifle, but what ever its’ heritage, it is a dish I normally drool over. This was good but I like it more like soup, or should I say a gooey trifle! We finished off with a decent cheese plate that unusually for Bangkok, contained non recently refrigerated ripe cheese.
Obviously Zanotti is a very good restaurant and I had a good meal. The staff were first rate, the place was virtually full so the atmosphere was good and there was a very pleasant piano player tinkling away in the front room. On that basis Zanotti is a very difficult restaurant to better! I hope that keeps my correspondent from Milan happy!

Posted by Sam at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)