Le Beaulieu
Sofitel Residence Asoke
50 Sukhumvit Soi 19
Bangkok 10110
Tel: 02 207 3333

Le Beaulieu has only been open for a couple of months, I had heard about it's forthcoming emergence having met Chef Herve Frerard a couple of times around town. Herve was formerly a chef at the Cascade club in the Ascot Building in South Sathorn road.
I have had several culinary conversations with Herve, (who hails from Marseille) and know that he is a very serious chef, as is his brother Dominic who oversees the stoves at the Trois Forts in Marseille. So I really expected Le Beaulieu to have a touch of class in the culinary department!
The restaurant is a nice compact size with a small bar attached and the kitchen viewable through a semi glass wall. The furnishings are minimalist with no table clothes and low dividers that break up the area nicely. Shelves with bottles and polished glasses catch the eye but the main feature is a Picasso style painting.
The wine list had good depth to it with a sensible collection of both French and Italian wines as well as a few new World offerings. Later when I talked to Herve about his wine list, he bemoaned the difficulty of regular supplies of the same wines and thus had a list that was too long, as a result of an expensive investment in wine. We had bottles of Pinot Grigio and Cotes du Rhone both priced at 1,450 Baht that were, price wise, at the bottom end of the list.
The menu is essentially, short, certainly by Bangkok standards, but it is a well-crafted menu that has been given a great deal of thought. On the Accor website the restaurants cooking style is described as Thematic cuisine. Well I have not a clue what that means and I should have asked the man, but I did not. I have researched and got no further forward on what it means other than the suggestion it means not in chronological order! So I am still in the dark.
A welcome feature is that the menu is not written in obscure foodie speak.
I was tempted by several dishes which was good; but just as I was about to order, Herve arrived to enlighten me with his way of thinking. So I had baked Alaskan scallops with endive and horseradish. Now that dish tells me several things. Firstly, Herve is buying premium products, there are two items there which are unusual; the Alaskan scallops and this is the first time I have see endive in Bangkok! The scallops were huge and the endive nice and crunchy, however I would have liked more bite from the horseradish. But it was an inventive and well thought through dish. On had marinated salmon which was most certainly not out of a packet. For mains he wanted us to have Marlon lobster which came as kind of pasta dish with fresh tagliattelli. I was not sure what a Marlon lobster was (other than expensive!). In some ways it is like a Phuket lobster, of a similar size but very red, has claws and comes from Australia. On had it and was very impressed. I had the duck confit-which, I was told, is made from French duck and as a result it was that much bigger. I always think that duck confit is a good test of a chef. It an easy dish to cut corners on, short cuts that are obvious however to those who know, in the final result. But this duck was moist with plenty of flavour.
Being a good boy, for a change, I opted for cheese tart instead of pudding. This was very good with great pastry and a strong blue cheese filling topped with sliced gingered pear. I was just thinking how good that was (and how good I had been) when Herve arrived with a plate gourmand which included a wonderful chocolate soufflé, strawberry tempura and mint & pepper ice cream; trashing any remote attempts at sensible eating!
So all that remained was to get on the wrong side of several calandos’s and send for a very large taxi to take me home. I said at the beginning that I really expected Le Beaulieu to have a touch of class in the culinary department.
I was not disappointed!