Curries and More
63/3 Soi Rumrudee
Bangkok 10330
Tel: 02 253 5408

Sometimes a place that I know nothing about will catch my eye.
Such was the case with Curries and More, which I'd seen several times as I'd taxied down Soi Rumrudee, but didn't know what sort of place it was. Then I saw a brief write-up that suggested I might just like it. However, the article left me with a nagging concern, as it didn't say if the restaurant sold wine or not. After all, a meal without wine is eating; a meal with wine is dining. I eat breakfast and after that I either lunch or dine, or sometimes both!
Thankfully, it turned out the place did offer wine, so off we went.
Curries and More is an attractive restaurant in a stand alone building with a big forecourt and both inside and outside dining areas. The outside area has a glass roof that has water flowing over it, which helps reduce the temperature. Inside is Spartan, but with some eclectic modern art.
We were greeted and seated quickly enough and a wine menu was produced. I was also encouraged to see a nice full wine rack near to where I was sitting.
Unfortunately, I quickly realised why it was full – the prices! Not many people are prepared to drink wine in a curry house when it costs more than it would at the Conrad just up the road.
I don't often bang on about wine prices, but some restaurants are just plain stupid with their pricing policies. At Curries and More, most bottles were at least Bt2,000 (before the plus plus).
Knowing my way round a few wine merchants' lists, it was clear to me that the prices being charged in the restaurant were about four times the wholesale price. Bearing in mind that the food is competitively priced, I couldn't understand why they were so keen to upset the wine drinkers. Maybe when I had earlier called to ask if they sold wine, they should have replied, 'Sure, if you can afford it.'
The food menu is long with a multiplicity of sections, from starters, soups salads and crepes, to a whole page of pastas, noodles and fried rice. Ironically, the list of curries was quite disappointing in that essentially they were all Thai blends. Thankfully, the menu also boasts a steaks page, a list of mains (mostly Thai) and a vegetarian page. You're not, as they say, strapped for choice. The only snag is that the dish descriptions are printed in a very thin script, which means reading glasses are needed even by those who normally have 20-20 vision.
I selected four starters for the three of us to share and they turned out pretty well. The avocado dip with crudites arrived as a sort of pre-starter, and that worked well, though more by accident than design. The dip was a little under-seasoned for my palate, but otherwise good. Of the other three dishes, the fish cakes were good, the baked mussels were over baked, but there was lots of decent cheese making it more like a well done croquet monsieur than mussels baked with cheese. The chicken steamed in a banana leaf was really moist and there was a good sauce of soy and other ingredients with sesame seeds. All in all a pleasant set of starters and we all enjoyed them.
We had delayed ordering our mains so we could get through the starters and have a small break between courses. Once rested, we ordered two curries and a sweet-and-sour duck for me. With the main dishes we were offered a choice of white or brown rice.
This was the first time I had seen brown rice in Thailand and I was amused to find that while it is considered a healthy option in the West, it is looked down on here as poor man's food because it is unprocessed (unpolished), with the inner husk still on it.
Rice stories aside, we all appreciated our main courses and rounded off the meal with some suitable puds.
We all enjoyed Curries and More because the food was good and the service was spot on. However, I won't be going back because, as I said, I like to dine, not eat, and dining there is simply too expensive. If you're happy just to eat, then check it out – the water is very competitively priced!