Bangkok Restaurant Week
One of my favorite times of the year is Restaurant Week. In the past I have experienced this in Seattle but this year I was informed that Bangkok has Restaurant Week (RW) too and if I am a fan of food, I should do my best to try a few restaurants. RW is a week or two out of the year where nice restaurants make a set menu at a lower cost for the customer. Restaurants were priced at 500, 750, and 1000 baht (with a 17% tax and service charge on top), which is between $16-32 (plus tax).
It was already the last week of restaurant week by the time we had a chance to narrow down our choices and make reservations. I figured that many places would be booked and our choices would be limited, but that was not the case due to such low tourism. After a few hours categorizing menus and ranking the top 25-30, I then began to check for availability. With Emily working during the day, it limited our options because we have to consider the travel time to get downtown on a weekday.
We ended up choosing three restaurants and decided we would go on a Wednesday and Friday after school, as well as Saturday evening (that being the last day for RW). We invited our two friends Nick and Tim. They work at Ruamrudee in different departments than Emily and they are our neighbors! Tim was able to get us a special perk, which allowed us to enjoy an extra dish to accompany each of our dinners. I will be going through each of our dinner experiences and showcasing the food we ate. Feel free to just browse the pictures or read on for detailed descriptions of each dish. Please enjoy.
On Wednesday, Emily and I visited a restaurant that was recommended to us, and was described as place that “reminds you of a grandma’s cooking.” We decided to hop on a water taxi for the first time with our friend Marianna graciously guiding us. It was a bumpy but fun experience and and cost less than a dollar for each ticket!
We got off at Thong Lor and after a thirty minute walk we found the sign for Soul Food Mahanakorn (Mahanakorn means great metropolis). It was awarded a Michelin plate three years in a row including this year! We knew we were in for a treat.
The first thing we ordered upon arrival were a couple of cocktails seeing as it was happy hour (!). The drinks crafted here were out-of-this world delicious with fresh herbs and spectacular flavor combinations. For this meal, it was just Emily and me. We were the only people at the restaurant during the majority of our dinner. This really made for a unique and beautiful experience. Dining at a Michelin-recognized restaurant with the waitstaff spending most of its time attending to you was pleasantly unexpected.
A huge factor for this is because of Covid and the lack of tourism around the nation at the moment. We are taking full advantage of opportunities like this where we can be the first in line when otherwise it would be rather difficult to get a table. We also recognize the hit that local shops and restaurants have taken in this economically difficult time and want to support businesses as much as we can.
We started off with Miang Kham, or “one bite wrap”. You wrap a betel leaf in a way that you can spoon all the bright and fresh toppings into it to make yourself a bite (or two) sized flavor pack. Having had this a few times since arriving in Thailand, it is a great way to start a meal by interacting with the food and sharing with the table. In this case we had Chinese kale leaves with toppings such as crispy dried prawns, toasted coconut, pineapple, fried garlic, ginger, bird’s eye chilies, lime, onion, cashews, and a tangy and sweet sauce.
This was followed by a crispy chicken wing, lemongrass, and cashew nut salad. Many of Thailand's salads have meat of some sort in it. Like many dishes in Thailand, this packed some heat but the lemongrass helped cut the kick a bit.
The next three dishes all came out at once. They were spicy duck soup with young coconut and makrut lime leaves, pork cheek curry with green peppercorns, and stir-fried smoked pork with onion shoots and grilled chili.
This was quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite meals. The curry was deeply rich and had such a depth of flavor to it. The spicy duck soup was on a level I have never been before. I don’t have much experience with soup, let alone an extremely sour soup like this one. The contents in the soup were juicy and very tender. The broth alone made our mouths pucker with each sip. The stir-fry was quite delicious, especially the onion shoots.
“The broth alone made our mouths pucker with each sip.”
The extra plate for this meal was mango sticky rice, the most popular dessert in Thailand. You can find stands all over selling mango sticky rice. Unfortunately up until then, I had not partaken in trying it. My oh my was it the perfect combination. It will be hard to pass up this dessert when I pass it by on the streets from now on. We ended up finishing our meal with a refreshing scoop of ice cream to cool the palate. Emily got their special coconut ice cream with coconut palm sugar caramel and peanuts while I went for their lychee ice cream. The perfect way to end the exquisite meal.
Friday, our next RW adventure, was a different beast altogether. It all started with Tim ordering a Grab Taxi (similar to Lyft/Uber). When the taxi arrived on our corner we were immediately told to get out of the vehicle and find a different taxi. Apparently, there are some drivers who will refuse you for being a foreigner or because they do not want to take you far into downtown due to traffic. Because of this, we had to think quickly and decided the only option given our time crunch for the reservation was for Tim to drive us to the restaurant. I could tell we were going to be a bit late due to the delay; however, we didn't expect the intensity of our delay.
It began to rain as we were heading downtown. Soon after we got off the highway we were met with flooded streets. The video below was taken a kilometer or two before arriving at the restaurant. The water was so high, it surpassed the sidewalk and depending on where you were standing, it came to your knees. The experience was exhilarating and frightening to say the least. I still can’t believe Tim’s tiny Nissan March did not stall.
When we finally got to the restaurant, there was thankfully a parking lot. It was full except for one spot next to the front door. We parked there and the staff used planks and buckets to make their way to our car so that we could prevent ourselves from getting even more wet. Unfortunately I was not paying attention and dropped my phone into the water and got my feet and legs quite wet. The staff took our car keys and parked the car for us. We were safe for the time being.
After our water-logged adventure we entered a very calm and unassuming environment. Emily and I walked in with our shoes in our arms after stepping out into the calf-deep water to exit the car. We felt a bit out of sorts, but we soon settled into the lovely ambiance and awaited our meal from Indus. It is an Indian restaurant that was awarded a Michelin plate three years in a row including 2020.
We started off with pappadum and a few different chutneys and sauces.
The next appetizer was a two bite palak patta chaat. This contained crisp spinach, chick pea, potato, yoghurt, chutney, and sev (crispy noodles). It was very creamy with a little bit of a crunch from the crispy spinach base.
The next dish was the perk plate. It was a hara bhara kebab and raw papaya murabba. This was probably the highlight of the whole meal for me. It was so crisp on the outside and soft and tender on the inside. Words cannot describe how this felt and truly tasted in my mouth. The meal could have ended there with about five more of those and I would have been a happy camper. Nonetheless, the meal continued.
Our last starter was a three way kebab. It started with a mild spiced sea bass marinated in carom seed, hung curd, yellow chili, and hand blended garam masala. The middle piece was broccoli florets from the royal projects marinated in cashew nut paste, cream, and cheese, flavored with cardamom powder. The last piece was chicken marinated with cashew nut paste, cream, cheese, cardamom. This dish was a memorable one as well. Each piece was so delicate yet packed with richness.
Our main courses were accompanied with the most glistening garlic naan you have ever seen. Photos do not do justice. The first dish came out in four separate bowls which consisted of chicken cooked with brown onion, cashew nut paste (it definitely had cinnamon too), and yoghurt. The second was baby eggplant with spiced onion and tomato. The last two were yoghurt and saffron rice. Each bowl had different flavors that paired really well with each other.
The end of the main course was very unique dish called lucknowi chicken dum biryani. It contained spiced chicken, caramelized onion, saffron flavored basmati rice layered and cooked “dum” style. They cut it open tableside for you. It was delicious and beautiful.
The two desserts were phirni and ayurvedic chai. The phirni was a rice pudding with saffron and cardamom and the chai contained basil, ginger, clove, cardamom, fennel seeds, and honey.
By the time our meal came to a close, much of the water had drained off the road and we were able to drive home safely.
Our restaurant week ended with comfort food near and dear to our hearts. Peruvian food. Emily and I lived in Peru for four months during our Study Service Term in college. This meal really sent us back to living in Lima (where Chef Santiago was from) where the food was unbelievably good. We went to a restaurant called Na Bar at Bangkok 1899. While the menu and chefs change throughout the year at this location, Peruvian cuisine was the choice for this year's RW and we could not have been happier.
We were again accompanied by Tim and Nick and thankfully did not get caught in the rain this time. This restaurant was very small and had both outdoor and indoor seating. We sat inside and were among very few people dining in the small restaurant. We were definitely the only people who got the RW deal. We were able to meet Chef Santiago (who prepared all our food single handedly in a small outdoor kitchen) as he presented the dishes to us throughout the meal. We were excited to again get the full attention of the chef and staff. It really showed through in the cooking. The only downside to this meal was that I forgot to take pictures of all the individual dishes. I was overly excited to eat and that won over picture taking. Chef Santiago informed us that because we are in Bangkok and not in Lima, certain ingredients were substituted or adjusted due to the commitment to using local ingredients. All dishes are pictured but some are in the background.
The meal began with chicha morada. This drink is made from purple corn and originated in the Andean region of Peru.
The ever popular ceviche was first. The chef decided to do it two ways. The first with mussels and the second with sea bass. While I lived in Peru for four months, back then, I was not nearly as open to trying fish or new foods. I believe this was my first time trying ceviche, mussels and sea bass. All three were exceptional.
The main dishes really shined. They were arroz con pollo, causa, y lomo saltado. Our perk plate was anticuchos de corazon (or beef heart). The arroz and anticuchos are pictured with the chef. Anticuchos are one of my favorite meats of all time. Chef Santiago graciously allowed me to take pictures of him working on our food. (I think it helped that we were the only ones he was serving.)
Dessert was another popular Peruvian dish called picarones or Peruvian donuts. This dish, in my opinion, tasted exactly how I remembered it from Peru. It was a great way to finish the meal. That, and we bought a round of pisco sours to close our meal and begin our next stop at a speakeasy for a couple of delightful beverages.
While this concludes our journey through our Restaurant Week in Bangkok, good eats still fill our bellies nearly every day. I am still in awe of how much amazing food Emily and I have been eating after only being in the country for just over a month. For next year’s restaurant week, I will be fully prepared and try to attend even more places.
