Fine Dining in Thailand

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of food in Thailand? Truth be told, fine dining was not what popped into mind first. Thailand’s street food that has been celebrated for years. It’s even glorified in foodie shows like Bizarre Food and No Reservations. But fine dining? We reserve that category for restaurants in New York or Europe. Nose up. There's no room for Southeast Asian cuisine in that space.

Yet the one revelation I had from my trip to Thailand was that the country’s fine dining packs enough punch to compete with the rest of the world. Upscale restaurants in Thailand are bold. Their dining rooms are elegant. Their dishes are complex. Yet they stay true to the very flavors and ingredients that makes Thailand so unique.

Move over, New York. Get out of the way, Paris. Hang up your pans, Italy. Thailand’s fine dining scene is on the rise. Take notice.

Here are two of my favorite restaurants:

1) nahm (The Metropolitan Hotel, Bangkok)

comohotels.com

If you haven’t heard of this restaurant before, consider yourself aware now. nahm is repeatedly voted as the best restaurant in all of Asia and reached as high as the third best restaurant in the world. nahm serves ancient Thai cuisine. Expect dishes that play with and balance sharp flavors to develop a strong yet harmonious flavor.  Interestingly, the dishes are cooked and prepared by an Australian, Chef David Thompson. Chef Thompson spent several years working and living in Thailand. Inspired by the country’s flavors and ingredients, he pledged to raise the profile of Thai cuisine and eventually earned the first Michelin Star for a Thai restaurant.

comohotels.com

I recommend ordering the set menu, since you can pick specific dishes from each category. The soft shell crab with chilies, holy basil and peppercorn was my favorite. Also try the coconut and turmeric crab curry and the grilled hiramasa kingfish salad.

2) Koh Thai Kitchen and Bar (Four Seasons, Samui)

press.fourseasons.com

The Four Seasons Resort in Koh Samui opened a new restaurant, Koh Thai Kitchen and Bar. Like nahm, it serves traditional Thai food, though it focuses more on the flavors and ingredients found in Samui. With that, you’ll find many authentic Thai dishes that may not be familiar to you.

Executive Chef Alex Gares does not hold back. Dishes are on the spicier side, but they balance out the sourness of the fish sauce and the pungent aroma of the shrimp paste used in most of his dishes.  Try the Plaa Goong (prawns with roasted chili paste dressing, lemongrass and lime leaf salad), the local oysters with tamarind leaves, crispy shallots, garlic, lime and seafood sauce, and the massaman nua (beef cooked in cardamom-scented southern curry). Lastly, Koh’s tom yum goong is perhaps the best I’ve had. Ever.

press.fourseasons.com

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A Peek at Brendan Sodikoff's Chicago Establishments

After a long hiatus, the Amateur’s Palate is back! There has been a lot going on in the amateur world, and I’m excited to share some of my learning’s with you. What’s the first announcement since my last post? The Amateur’s Palate is now headquartered in the great culinary city of Chicago.

For those who haven’t had the chance to have a proper taste of Chicago, this city is an appropriate rival to New York in the culinary scene. While smaller than the Big Apple, Chicago has a cluster of Michelin Star chefs, Top Chef alums, and up and coming restaurateurs.

One restaurateur I’ve been watching in particular is Brendan Sodikoff, owner of some of the most exciting restaurants in Chicago. So far, he’s opened four restaurants and a donut shop, and a pizzeria is on its way. The dishes in his restaurants don’t try to over complicate things. They’re simple, hearty, and packed with flavor—exactly the kind of food you want to eat over and over again. It’s easy to become a regular at his restaurants. 

Here is a quick summary and a few thoughts on his establishments.

Gilt Bar

A favorite of mine, Gilt Bar has a small though strong and consistently good menu. I recommend getting the chicken, octopus and chorizo and any of the toasts.

Courtesy of Giltbarchicago.com

Image courtesy of Mega Bites Chicago

Au Cheval

Au Cheval is a dark diner with a DJ playing good music. Their burgers are so deliciously juicy, you’ll forget about all of the other diners in your neighborhood.

Image courtesy of Aucheval.tumblr.com

Image courtesy of Aucheval.tumblr.com

Bavette’s  Bar & Boeuf

Bavette’s Bar & Boeuf is a sharp restaurant that primarily serves steak. However, I’ve also had the chicken here and the special, which was a bratwurst that was half beef and half pork. Both were simply prepared but wonderfully cooked. Also, try the side of corn, which is prepared Elote style with Parmesan, chili and lime.

Image courtesy of Bavette's Bar & Boeuf

Maude’s Liquor Bar

Maude’s Liquor Bar is an elegant French bistro restaurant. The food is good, as expected, but I like to go here for the cocktails. 

Image courtesy of Maude's Liquor Bar

Image courtesy of Maude's Liquor Bar

The Doughnut Vault

The Doughnut Vault opens early in the morning and stays open until they run out of doughnuts—and that happens quickly. Lines to purchase these doughnuts circle the block during the weekends, and it doesn’t matter if it’s sunny, raining or snowing.

Image courtesy of The Doughnut Vault

Image courtesy of The Doughnut Vault

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animal

You're "foie'd up!" exclaimed our waiter. We were at the trendy downtown Los Angeles restaurant, animal. Our waiter, who resembled a young Paul Giamatti, was commenting on the abundance of foie gras in half of the dishes we chose to try that evening.

We didn't plan to have so much foie gras for dinner, but Chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo created a menu that used the ingredient in so many creative ways, we couldn't order just one. Better yet, the chefs' use of different parts of the animal is astonishingly unique that I wonder what inspired their dishes. They pair unlikely ingredients with proteins: think lamb neck served with fava beans and daikon, or consider veal brains with apple sauce.

Because of all of this, we couldn't cling to a salad for safety. In celebrating animal, we decided to order exactly what they wanted us to order...the wild.

Take a look:

poutine with oxtail gravy and cheddar cheese

bone marrow topped with chimichurri and caramelized onions

foie gras loco moco, with quail egg, spam and hamburger meat

foie gras, biscuit and maple sausage gravy

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Try These Restaurants In San Francisco

I was recently in San Francisco for a business trip. While most of my time there was spent in a convention center and in hotels, I was able to sneak out and try some of San Francisco's best restaurants. Here are a few of my favorites:

Flour + Water

Area: Mission District

Rumor has it that this popular hipster spot made Steve Jobs wait for a table. And I don't blame him for getting in line. Their dishes are simple, rustic and made with the freshest ingredients. Their menu is seasonal, but you can't go wrong with any of the pasta dishes. I also recommend trying the radiatore with smoked hen, pancetta, wild arugula and chili. And if they let you, substitute the hen with rabbit. Delish!

Nettie's Crab Shack

Area: Union Street

There's something so comforting about this restaurant that if I lived in San Francisco, I'd be a regular at this place. Maybe it's the restaurant's 'no frills' approach to its dining room, maybe it's the dedicated and hospitable wait staff...or maybe it's the gigantic crab roll they give you. Large globs of fresh dungeness crab are served in a heavily buttered roll. Yum.

Anchor & Hope

Area: SoMa

Anchor & Hope is a great escape from the surrounding convention center and hotel conference rooms, and it's the perfect place to pop in for a nice lunch. Fresh seafood is served daily. Try their clam chowder or one of the many seafood sandwiches they have to offer. I had a fried clam sandwich and thought it was lovely. Don't forget to order the rosemary and thyme french fries with your sandwich. They're to die for.

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Yikes! Brooklyn Restaurant Serves Big Bowl of Slime

by Jesse Riggle, Amateur Guest blogger from New York, NY
(Photo on left is one of Jesse's work. His paintings appear in galleries from LA to NYC. Check out his work)


Hello there, my name is Jesse (not to be confused with your regular host). Jessica asked me to guest blog, so here are the words I have written.

I recently learned a valuable food-lesson, a lesson specifically of a food to avoid. The food in question: Okra. Now, before I get to far along I'd like to clear one thing up, I don't actually have anything against okra. In fact I have had okra that I quite liked. Pickled okra, okra at Indian restaurants, delicious. But, I still may never order it again. Let me tell you why (and some other stuff too).

First a brief back-story. A couple of my friends started a Brooklyn/Queens-centric eating club about a year ago. We ate at a great many restaurants with an abundance of good and interesting food. Nothing any of us would call a lemon ever cropped up, not a bad record for a year of new restaurants. Well, a week back (which happened to be nearly the 1 year anniversary) we went to a new place that was also across the street from the first place we ever went to, fortuitous? Fateful? Frightening? eh... The restaurant is called Buka and deals in Nigerian food.

The restaurant itself is perfectly nice. Roomy, a swell wait staff, a comfortable davenport, what more could you want in your first 5 minutes? They also presented us with a very intriguing cocktail list. I myself did not partake, as I have old-man tastes in alcohol (whisky, beer, and gin, please), but everyone else at the table thoroughly enjoyed their fare. A promising start, spirits were high.

Next up came the appetizers. I ordered some- thing. I don't really remember what it was but it had honey and cake in the name. What they gave me had no honey and was not very cake like either. In fact, upon my first bite I thought to myself and verbally stated, "This tastes like the zoo." Now, I have never eaten a zoo, but I imagine if you could eat a zoo it would taste like my appetizer. That might sound like an unpleasant flavour, but really, when the strangeness of it passed I quite enjoyed it. I like zoo's, they make me happy, and as it so happens, I would probably like to eat one. The rest of the appetizers on the table were also generally delicious. So far so good.

Then the main course... The moment when things started to get iffy. There was an equal split of people ordering whole fish or some variety of meat in a stew/sauce type setup plus fufu. Fufu is a starch, their answer to bread, it is pounded yam or cassava, formed into a ball. Myself, I ordered the goat with the fermented cassava fufu. I also ordered the okra sauce (remember when I mentioned I probably won't order okra again?). Well, in my excitement for the big bowl of food infront of me, I grabbed my fork, gave it a quick stir, and lifted said fork. A nice string of melted good came up with my fork, and I said, "Hey, there is cheese in this!" I love cheese, it might be my favorite. Then I thought about what I had said and it dawned on me there was probably no actual cheese in my bowl. Upon further inspection I discovered the whole thing was a big ol' bowl of slime. We're talking Ghostbusters slimer-slime here. Serious slime. I stared at it in disbelief, vaguely remembering an episode of Top Chef where Mr. Colicchio mentions his distaste for okra, for it being slimy.

I went full on squint-eyed suspicious staring at my food. I decided to go for it though. I got a big ol' scoop of okra on my fork and moved it toward my mouth. A long un-broken strand of slime still connected my fork to the bowl as I shoved it in my mouth. It was a mistake. My mouth and brain could not wrap themselves around this... stuff. I might have tried to spit it out but I think it was afixed to my tongue by this point. I did not give up though, I tried eat my food. I ate as much goat as I could, it still had the skin on it near as I could figure, and there was a bone in my bowl I could not identify. It looked like a check mark. I went so far as to look up anatomical drawings of goat skeletons trying to find this bone, I could not. A mystery. The saving grace to this whole debacle was the fufu. I was able to dunk the fufu in the slime and eat some of it. The flavours were all fine, but the solids and I guess liquids (of the non-Newtonian variety), were not in my palatablity-range. I was not alone in this, most people around the table agreed, that maybe the food was a little to authentic for our American mouths to handle.

After we finished, we all walked down the street to a soul-food restaurant for dessert. Good times. Seriously, good times, I enjoyed the whole night. The restaurant was a totally new food experience for me, and I am glad I went. If for nothing more than my appetizer that tasted like the zoo and my new found knowledge to never ever order okra again. Would I recommend the place? Sure why not, just stay away from the okra, and probably the goat too (and if you hate the food, there is soul food down the street).

The end!

*As a side not, I looked up Nigerian cuisine on the internet, and learned of a food they quite enjoy, that being draw soup. According to wikipedia: "typically [made] from okra or melon seeds. It gets its name from the thick nature of the broth; it draws out of the bowl when eaten". So it would seem this is what I had.

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Skip Salt Bar in Manhattan

I recently dined at Salt Bar in downtown Manhattan. Salt Bar is a typical lower east side hang out that draws in neighborhood folks by offering $1 oysters. But unless I'm in New Orleans where oysters are abundant, I'm skeptical of any oyster offered at $1, especially if there is no information provided about its origin.

So, I opted to try their main menu instead. I ordered their poached flounder curry with carrots and spinach, which was priced at $19. It should have been priced at $2.

The "poached" flounder was actually a defrosted fish fillet. It had a bland, watery taste, which led me to believe that it was a few days old. The carrots sticks were taken straight from the snack bag. They were lazily thrown in the curry and were served raw (yes, raw!). The sauce itself had potential, but it was diluted by water from either the spinach or fish.

I couldn't believe that they offered a dish that received little to no care. Salt Bar is located in a neighborhood that offers very good food. If it doesn't reexamine the quality of its food and the execution of its dishes, I'm afraid it won't survive Manhattan's cutthroat restaurant industry.

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Manhattan's Japanese Street Food

I recently ate at Saki Bar Hagi, which is located in the theatre district in New York City. I heard a lot about the subterranean restaurant, which serves diners Japanese street food and was featured on Anthony Bourdain's show "No Reservations."

I had the octopus balls, which reminded me of Spanish croquetas, just with tentacles instead of ham. Surprisingly, they were tasty and satisfying, and the octopus wasn't overcooked. In contrast, the marinated eggplant appeared to be packed with flavor, but we quickly realized that it had a bland taste instead. Afterwards, we ordered the fish collar which had a wonderful, fatty flavor. To finish off our meal, we had a plate of skewers which included quail eggs, steak cubes, pork belly and lamb. The skewers were exactly what you were expecting from protein dishes sold on the street and nothing more.

While Saki Bar Hagi's Japanese street food certainly beats the hot dog stand around the corner, the flavors did not meet up to the hype that so many foodies raved about. Perhaps it's because I'm Asian and the unique ingredients don't surprise me, or perhaps it's because I don't have the nostalgia for Japan that its regulars have. Nonetheless, the restaurant was okay...nothing more than good, old street food.

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Tasting Poland at Lomzynianka

I recently accompanied a food club to one of New York City’s best pierogi joints. We visited Lomzynianka in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a small Polish restaurant that lightens the diners’ spirit with its abundance of streamers hanging on the ceiling and flower leis around a deer’s head.

Diners will know they are getting an authentic experience by peering into the kitchen, which looks more like a family’s kitchen in Lomza, Poland—the region that inspires many of the dishes—than a commercial one.

I shared my food with a fellow diner. We started off with the Pierogi Sampler, which offers a plate full of the dumplings (you can have them boiled or fried).

It would be a disappointment for anyone who visits this restaurant and doesn’t have them. Each pierogi bursts with flavor and didn’t exhibit the bland doughy taste that many restaurants settle for. Order the pierogies stuffed with potato and cheese, as well as the ones with meat; I found it hard to pick a favorite.

We also had the Polish Platter which included three more pierogies, kielbasa, stuffed cabbage, bigos and potatoes. While I visited the restaurant for the pierogies, the rich rustic taste of the stuffed cabbage was the highlight of the meal.

Better yet, the tab for two full diners was less than $20.

Polish Platter

Pierogi Sampler

(Photos taken from Yelp.com users)

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Exposing South Williamsburg's Café Moto

No other borough in New York City is as protective of its neighborhood secrets as Brooklyn. And Café Moto in South Williamsburg is one of those secrets.

Located almost directly under the J-M-Z train, the restaurant shows an unassuming exterior, with peeling walls and a rickety old bike hanging in place of a sign. Because of the narrow space, Café Moto can easily come off as stuffy. Instead, the live jazz entertainment (provided nightly) and laid-back neighborhood crowd immediately makes the restaurant warm and inviting.

For appetizers, my table had toasted bread with a gruyère cheese dip and the steamed artichoke. The dishes were simple yet flavorful, a perfect precursor to our main entrees.

I ordered the pork ribs rubbed with coarse black pepper and spices. It was accompanied with creamy mashed potatoes and a small salad dressed with balsamic vinaigrette. Overall, the food was tasty and satisfying.

This, in addition to the ambiance, left me eager to return and try more of Café Moto’s food. This could be bad news for South Williamsburg residents. For if most diners left as pleased as I was, then their secret won’t last for long.

Additional tip: After your meal at Café Moto, walk a few blocks West to Trophy Bar for great music and drinks.

More on Café Moto:

The Anti-Tourist

Thursday Club NYC

Yelp Customer Reviews

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Depuy Canal House: A Stone House Frozen in Its Past

There’s nothing worse than seeing a legendary restaurant lose its way...attracting diners by boasting its stellar past, rather than the dishes it produces. Almost every Manhattanite will agree with me that there are many of them in New York.

Such is the story of the Depuy Canal House in Hudson Valley, NY. It is the region’s pride and joy, a stone house that has been serving food in one way or another since 1797. Located just two hours north of Manhattan, the restaurant received rave reviews from newspapers such as The New York Times and has been labeled as a “must see” in various Hudson Valley guidebooks.

Excited about its reputation for its innovative use of local products (its menu is prix fixe, changes daily), I visited the restaurant last March.

In short, the restaurant fell short of expectations. While the salmon I ordered was cooked well, the fish was drowning in a bland, orange, creamy sauce, which was said to have a “Japanese influence.” As a result of the slow wait staff, the dish was served room temperature. Perhaps more disturbing was that the same orange sauce was used to flavor my dining partner’s pasta dish. And though the dish was more palatable than the salmon, it did not deliver on the originality that so many write-ups have promised. Instead, it was reminiscent of pasta served in a sub-par Italian fast food restaurant found in the middle of Times Square.

So disappointing was the food that the slow service added fuel to our fire (we had a 20 minute wait between our appetizer and main course). In the end, with our water glasses empty, half eaten dishes sitting in front of us for awhile and an absent waiter, my partner and I decided to throw in the towel, calling an end to our dining experience at the Depuy Canal House. We paid and left the restaurant, even before our dessert was served.

One can only hope that the restaurant fixes its flaws and returns its attention to producing innovative dishes. The stone house and colonial décor are charming, but legacy can only take a restaurant so far. It must be reminded, that it’s the food—not its reputation—that’s the star.

More on the Depuy Canal House:

Chowhound
The New York Times
Yelp Customer Reviews

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