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!