David Thompson’s love letter to Bangkok street food remains an essential Thai dining – and drinking – experience.
More is more at this spirited restaurant and bar in the basement of the city’s historic State Buildings precinct. The walls both indoors and out are adorned with more street art than your average Thai establishment. The cheery staff patrolling the sprawling dining room get in more steps per service than most waiters. And the fast-moving kitchen injects more spice, fire and smoke into its cooking than you might have thought possible. Best of all, the more people at your table, the more of the menu you can take for a spin.
Glossy tubes of silky eggplant stir-fried with minced pork and prawns proves high-volume cooking doesn’t have to mean slapdash cooking, while the whole five-spice-braised pork hock is the stuff of group dining dreams.
While favourites such as the Chiang Mai larp (spicy!), som dtum (vibrant!) and Thai coffee ice-cream (cooling!) aren’t going anywhere, they’re joined by newcomers that mainline the immediacy of Bangkok street food. Grilled squid gorlae is charry, salty and sweet in all the appropriate places, just as a crisp salad of banana blossom and prawns nails the herbal-hot-spicy trifecta.
Glossy tubes of silky eggplant stir-fried with minced pork and prawns proves high-volume cooking doesn’t have to mean slapdash cooking, while the whole five-spice-braised pork hock is the stuff of group dining dreams. Now factor in a bar teeming with spice-friendly cocktails, wines and beers and it’s little wonder this party continues to pump. More, please.
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