Bangkok: Espresso

It has been almost 5 years since I last met L, my good friend from postgrad days in Birmingham. So to learn that she came back to Thailand for a short visit from Canada, where she lives now, me and P arranged a dinner with L to catch up the good ol' wicked days. L suggested that we should dine at Espresso in Intercontinental Hotel for their seafood night. It was Baht1500++ per person so after browsing some reviews around the web, I was looking forward to their food.

As soon as we entered the restaurant, we were greeted with a long line of food. I only managed to snap the seafood bit of the line and as you can see; prawns, oysters, mussles and crabs are waiting for you!

I started off with some small plate starters. Clockwise from the Top left; their hummus was rather dry and bland. The thing was I couldn't find anything to dip it with. No carrot or cucumber sticks, not even pita bread. Quite disappointing. Next is shrimp cocktail. It was good and interesting since they have cocktail sauce in that small tube. Next are seared scallop with potato salad and jelly fish with sesame oil. I like these two.

Interesting thing about Japanese sashimi & sushi line here is that they didn't cut the fish and put on plate for you to take. You have to ask the chef what fish you want and they will cut them for you. I think this is a great way to preserve the freshness of sashimi and sushi. Pure love for this one.

Their hot and sour soup is quite up-scaled as they put some shark fin in it. Taste wise is good but this is hard for me who actually made up my mind that i won't eat shark fin anymore. So last night, the shark must forgive me for consuming that.

Finally, my cold seafood plate. Oysters were incredibly fresh so having that with Thai spicy seafood sauce was pure bliss. Mussle and crab were okay. I think I finally learn that I love fresh crab more than those boiled and frozen crabs even though they were Alaska King Crab. The sweetness of crab wasn't there.

I made a visit to grilling station and picked lamb, salmon patty, seabass on skew and rock lobster for grilling. Lamb was the winner of the night. No smell or after taste, very tender and very well seasoned. I love their mint jelly too, always prefer mint jelly over mint sauce. So good that I went back for another two. I should have eaten just lamb last night - seriously good.

Chinese and Thai corner was okay. Roasted duck was okay. Soft shell crab with black pepper was awesome anyway, still crispy though made for a while. Char siu bun was good. Dumpling was so so. Fried rice and Thai steam fish paste (Hor Mok - ห่อหมก) were medicore.

They had small pot of cottage pie so I tried. It was so so. Had some salad to balance out. I would say the choice of salad here was pretty disappoint. Only some leafy stuffs and a corner where you can make caesar salad. For salad crazy like me, I would love to see more choices of vegetable. Their caesar salad corner was nice since they have even anchovy, parmigiano, croutons and bacon bits for you to add as much as you want. I had a plate of that at the end of the night. Up to my liking coz I can put salad dressing in the amount that I like which isn't too soggy.

Their dessert lines are actually quite massive with choices of fresh fruits, cakes, fountain chocolate, souffle, ice cream and even Thai dessert like sticky rice and mango! I only had their vanilla and chocolate ice cream which was okay. L said their mango ice cream was great so she went for another round. I guess if you like sweet stuff, this could be something for you.

I ended the night with cheese plate. Loving my Brie there so much. So creamy, so heavenly. We had green tea as complimentary to wrap up the night. It was a very enjoyable evening since we haven't seen each other for a long time now esp. altogether like this. So much to catch-up and gossip about. We even talked about the good old days in Birmingham, all the glam and not so glam about it. We started at 6.30 pm and finished at 10.05 pm. What a night isn't it!

Espresso
Intercontinental Hotel
Bangkok
Tel 02 656 0444 ‎
BTS: Chid Lom


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Bangkok: On the table Tokyo Café

My friend has been pestering me for a while that she wanted to try "On the table Tokyo Café" restaurant which opened not long ago on 6th floor of Central World. So yesterday, we went out and decided to try the food there. I must tell you I am skeptical with the word "Tokyo Café" coz it can be good or just totally suck.

The restaurant gives out a cozy atmosphere with waitress dressing pretty much homely, if you asked me. I ordered honey lemon drinks while the girls had just water which came with cute PET bottles.

We ordered Potato cheese croquette which came with yummy dipping sauce. It was almost like thousand island sauce but not that strong. Very yummy indeed. Then we had Kara-age salad which was simple with clean taste.

They have two types of Okonomiya; Nara and Sapporo ones. I can't remember what is Nara Okonomiyaki but Sapporo ones is associated with cheese so we ordered that. It was medicore. Not that worth it. Same with salmon capaccio. It was so-so - nothing to remember about.

Their cheese curry rice gratin was one of the most talking about dish and it didn't fail at all. If you love cheese and Japanese curry - this dish is a must. Although my complain would be that the curry sauce was not enough for that amount of rice and cheese. Need more sauce!

Their pasta dishes are also amazing. I can't remember the name of the top one but it must be some bacon with olive oil and dried chillies. It was light with a hint of spiciness which was perfect. On the other hand, their cabonara sauce was very thick and quite messy when we tried to eat it as it splashed everywhen and on my white top as well. As it was thick, I was glad that we shared the food coz it would be too much to have this own my own.

I was already full but some girls wanted to try there dessert so they ordered this waffle with banana and chocolate with green tea ice cream. I only had one bite and it was nice. Other girls love it so I guess it was quite good.

Maybe coz I didn't have any expectation so the food turned out to be good. I should try other dishes next time.

On the table Tokyo Café
6th floor, Central World
Tel 02 613 1558-9
Website: http://www.facebook.com/OntheTableTokyoCafe
BTS: Siam

Bangkok: random eats!

I have quite a number of small eats going on while I was posting my Japan eats. These aren't big meal so decide to stick them up together and post them as one big entry instead of mini review one.

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The other holiday last month, I opened my fridge and found nothing to eat apart from some salad vegetable and my frozen tamagoyaki from Shurou. So I decided to microwave it and ate with the salad. Texture of the egg was almost as a chiffon cake, it tasted almost like castella (without flour - of course!). I had the egg with some shoyu which helped bringing out the taste of tamagoyaki. I still got some of these left in my freezer so maybe I should do traditional Japanese breakfast with miso soup, seaweed and tamagoyaki someday.

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Two weeks ago, I went to Central World to buy dress for one of my best friend's wedding. My tummy was growling quite loud. I was craving thick french fries so decided to stop by at Mos Burger which was just re-opening.

I love Mos burger. I think they are so much better than American franchised burgers like McDonald's (of course) and even better than Burger King. I know, I have been Japanised in so many way but you have to see how thick the beef patty in Mos burger and compare that with McDonald's one. It's undeniable that Mos burger is worth the money more!

my set

clam chowder

Just look at the beef patty - so thick!

I ordered the premium beef burger set (comes with their thick french fries and soft drink) and clam chowder. I love their clam chowder. You can still taste tiny cubes of potatoes and plenty of clams in the soup. It was very pleasant. The burger was nice. They didn't put too much sauce on which in a way is good coz you can really get the taste of beef and its juiciness. However, being Thai, I love my food with tangy flavour. So if you asked, I think it wasn't season enough. Nonetheless, it was close to my favourite tasty beef burger I had in 2009 while I was in Japan so I wasn't complaining!

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On new year's day, I went to see N and F as we were the only people in our group that stuck in Bangkok. We played around at N house for a bit before took for Vietnamese food (forgot to take pictures, too hungry!). It was only 7.30pm so we decided to waste our lives away at Nawamin City Avenue. It was sort of like an area with shops and restaurants stuck together. After browsing through Daiso shop (it's Baht60 for everything, comparing that with Japanese Daiso which every piece is 100yen), we decided to have some dessert at Iberry Cafe.

Iberry is famous ice cream shop-comes-famous franchised dessert shop/restaurant. They have variety of ice cream esp. those you cannot find in regular ice cream shops such as Horlick, Lychee, Durian or tamarind. It's everyone's favourite ice cream, even my mum since she can go with Thai fruit sorbet instead of general artificial vanilla or chocolate flavour. However, it wasn't cheap. One scoop is Baht49 which like almost 1 pound. That is expensive considering you can get a bowl of noodle for your lunch for only Baht30!


We ordered waffle with a scoop of green tea and double chocolate. Their waffle was really nice. You can get a taste of saltiness in waffle as well so it went well with ice cream and maple syrup. We also ordered an extra scoop of Spicy mango ice cream to share. This is very Thai taste so would recommend anyone who come here to try. Basically it is a flavour originating from sour mango which we usually dip with salt-chili dipping. It was funny for first trial I'm sure since it would be sour and a bit of spicy. It was very pleasant anyway!

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Shouro Tamagoyaki
Chuo-ku, Tsukiji 4-13-13, Tokyo
Website: http://www.shouro.co.jp/top/3.html

Mos Burger
3 floor, Central World,
Ratchaprasong road, Bangkok

Iberry Cafe
Nawamin City Avenue,
Kaset-Nawamin Road, Bangkok

Bangkok: Utaandon

Last week, me and friends arranged a meeting at re-opened Central World. It was like coming back home again. I remembered going there so often, almost every week, to just hang around, shopping and dining. Ironically, as I parked my car on 7th floor, same spot as ever, my ipod started playing Boyzone's Coming Home Now. It gave me the chill as literally, I was really coming "HOME".

N suggested that we need to eat at Utaandon since it's been a while and we all just agreed. Utaandon is Japanese restaurant specialised on udon/soba as they made those themselves. It is located on 6th floor of Isetan, closely to Kinokuniya book store. Isetan's 6th floor is like Japanese food heaven anyway, with wide-range from Tonkatsu to yakiniku, even Japanese-style spaghetti. Also the food hall in front of Isetan's supermarket on 5th floor is also Japanese food heaven for take away stuffs. Try food-shopping around 7pm there and you would feel as if you were shopping at Tokyu's supermarket in Shibuya; food price was lower and Japanese people started grabbing food around. It is very interesting, not to mention all food taste awesome!


Back to Utaandon, I was late arrival as I spent time browsing through F21, Zara, Mango and Central Food Hall so only able to capture food I have ordered. I ordered Tempura Udon Zen (if I remember the name correctly). Basically, it's cold udon with dipping sauce along with prawn and vegetable tempura. It looked small but never let that deceive you because the portion is very filling. I like their udon, the density and size is just perfect. Their dipping sauce is also good, I put in negi, grated daikon and a bit of wasabi to spice up the taste and it was yum.


I also ordered Fresh Tofu Salad. I really like Japanese dressings. I think this one it is sesame-based dressing. It went very well with salad. I love this dish for tofu and avocado. I usually find avocado too "fatty" for my taste if I eat just plain avocado but I have no problem eating it with the salad dressing and tofu. It did compliment each other well.

Shame that we were too full by now as I wanted to order their Oden. Oh well, next time!

Utaandon
6th floor Isetan,
Central World,
Rachaprasong
Open: 11.00 - 21.00 Hrs

Bangkok: Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao

As Buddhist lent day or Vassa is coming next week, me and friends decided to visit temple to do some praying and giving some goods for monks to use during the lent day. We visited Wat Prathum Wannaram, a peaceful temple in the busiest shopping district of Bangkok. Aside from general goods such a soap, umbrella etc. we are giving to monk, I bought light bulbs to give to the temple as well. I actually like this idea. The tradition of Thai is that in the past before Buddhist lent day everyone will dedicate big candles to temples so monks can use them during the rainy season. As time flies with electricity everywhere, it is more practical to dedicate light bulbs to temples additional from just candles. How thoughtful!


Anyhow, after doing good deeds, we decided to dine at our fave Chinese restaurant which we haven't dined for so long. It's "Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao" on underground floor of Erawan Shopping Complex. After waiting for some friends coming, we just ordered food like crazy.


We, of course, ordered Xiao Long Bao. Speaking from my point of view, I think Crystal Jade does better job than Ding Tai Fung. Or at least comparing with branches in Malaysia, anyway. In KL, I have tried both Crystal Jade and Ding Tai Fung and I'd prefer Crystal Jade as the soup is more juicy and I like moist thin flour sheet than the thick one of Ding Tai Fung. Too bad that Ding Tai Fung hasn't opened branch here in Bangkok yet. I would like to give them another chance before claiming that Crystal Jade wins this war.




We've ordered some fried vegetable in oyster sauce, chicken in szechuan sauce and jellyfish in sesame oil. N and I started persuaded everyone to agree on ordering deep fried duck instead of Peking duck that we usually go for. The deep fried duck comes with the sweet dark sauce, just like Peking duck, and the small soft bun. I love love the crispy duck skins from deep fried and the duck meat isn't too tough.


I ordered the corn soup with egg and dried scallop instead of my usual hot and sour soup. I seriously have a thing for soup with a trace of egg white. I think it's a perfect combination and this dish reminds me of good old days. When I was young when me and my family went on a trip to US, we usually ate at Chinese restaurant and they would served this soup at almost every meal. How nostalgic!


Some of us weren't still full so we orderd dumplings with braised beef in szechuan sauce to cheer. The beef was incredibly tender. The sauce isn't too hot, unlike its look and the dumplings were very juicy and meaty. If you like beef, I would recommend to everyone. After finishing our meal, we decided to complete the day by visiting Thao Maha Brahma Shrine, just outside Erawan Shopping Complex, to do some praying. I noticed that there are a lot of Chinese-speaking people visiting and praying there. Probably they have their wishes granted by Thao Maha Brahma before, that's why this has become one of tourist hotspots of Bangkok.

Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao
Erawan Outlet - Lower Ground Floor Urban Kitchen Erawan Bangkok
Tel: 02 250 7988
Website: http://www.crystaljade.com/thailand.htm
BTS: Chid lom



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