Restaurants in Bangkok are cheap but you might as well get the food from roadside stalls. Thai food tastes the same and it’s very difficult to “improve” its taste in restaurants.
Taling Pling
60 Thanon Pah, Silom
+66-2234-4872
We arrived in Bangkok at 8am and shopped and only had dinner at 8pm. Taling Pling a 2-storey Thai seafood restaurant with a wonderful exterior. Very romantic. But inside, it was rather noisy. The waiters and waitresses don’t know any English, so ordering was extremely tedious. We ordered a few dishes to share, but like most restaurants serving thai cuisine, the portions were pathetic and we had to order more servings of the same dish. I wish the restaurant could have gauged the number of people and dish out the proportional serving. The seafood red curry came in a 3 inch by 3 inch aluminum foil – too stingy. The food was wonderful, not mind-blowing, although we suspect that most of them are already pre-cooked because they sent out the dishes so quickly. All in all, I like the food but the service and the portions can be improved.
(ps: no photos of food because we were so starved.)
Once Upon a Time
32 Petchburi Soi 17, Pratunam
+66-2252-8629
When we asked for authentic Thai food at reasonable prices, a white-guy concierge introduced us. When we reached, we noticed that the price wasn’t very reasonable and the food isn’t very authentic. If you read the history of the restaurant on their very amateur homemade website, 50% of the 2 owners is a white guy. We came to a conclusion that concierges introduce restaurants based on their allegiance, and not the hotel guests’ requests.
The history of the restaurant is such that the owners wanted to preserve a piece of Thai historical architecture and so the restaurant was born. Boy, was the restaurant spooky! We didn’t take any photos. It’s a very old 2-storey house with dark wood, and on the walls occupied fully huge portraits of movie stars. Some of the portraits are quite like porn. The grandfather clock as the centerpiece of the room is stuck slightly past midnight. The dim lighting didn’t help calm my friends’ nerves. (I don’t believe in ghosts.)
(Photo from Food4Thot)
Because the food wasn’t very cheap, we ordered a Tom Yum to share. I like it better than the one we had at Taling Pling because it was less spicy but everyone else liked the Taling Pling one better. The Tom Yum can serve more than 10 people.
Because the food wasn’t very cheap, we each ordered a rice or noodle dish, instead of sharing the expensive dishes. I had Pad Thai everywhere I went so I don’t want another Pad Thai. I had a rice dish. It was first fried with cashew and raisins and seafood and lap cheong, then baked in a coconut with coconut meat. WOW, I WANT TO EAT THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN. It was sweet and savory and cashew and raisins brought out the aroma of the rice. But I think this is an invention? Not an authentic Thai dish? I may be wrong.
Sirocco
1055/111 Silom Road, Lebua Hotel
+66-2624-9555
In every country I go, I can eat bread for every meal to save money but I must have one expensive meal at one renowned restaurant. Sirocco is the world’s tallest al fresco rooftop restaurant – and the meal can go up to $200 per person. My CHEAP friends didn’t want to spend the money so we missed this. But look at the gorgeous view – and such an experience to dine at the world’s #1. URGH. Instead, we went to Spring Summer (see next).
Spring Summer
199 Soi Sukhumvit 49
Spring: +66-2392-2747
Summer: +66-2392-2757
Spring Summer is not what I call a classy restaurant. For many Thais, it was just a casual meal. People were in flipflops and shorts and teenagers in school uniforms dine here. But of course, you could tell from the comfortable way the school children dined that they have rich parents.
According to the name, you’d know that there are two restaurants: Spring for indoor dining and Summer for outdoor dining. Since it was raining that day, we went to Spring. The frustrating thing was there was an usher with an umbrella to fetch the guests from the cars to the restaurant but when we arrived in our two cabs, no one offered the umbrella.
We ordered several dishes to share and ordered our own main. I had been craving for stuffed chicken wings since I came to Bangkok. The best I had is (years ago) at Yishun Safra where the stall owners are Thai. They moved to a shopping mall. I dislike Spring’s fusion style of stuffed wings. What is the chef thinking about? The skin of the chicken wing, when soaked in curry, would no longer be crisp. What is the point? The menu shows that there are two wings per serving so we ordered 4 plates for 8 people but when it came, there were 3 wings on each plate. And my girl friends, after seeing the gogo boys for the past few nights, decided to go on a diet! So that they could attract the boys. I don’t understand women. They paid money for the boys; they didn’t need to lose weight! What were they thinking? Finding true love in Bangkok??? They should have gone on diet before the holiday, not during it! And of course, the other two gay friends didn’t want to put on weight. So I ate 4 wings. Nearly puked.
One of the girls kept complaining about the restaurant: slippery floor, poor ambience, etc, but she has always been a 大小姐, very disagreeable, wants things to be done her way. So I would ignore her comments. Besides she was impatient for the meal to finish to visit her gogo boy. So all in all, it wasn’t a bad restaurant for a casual meal. S$40 per pax.
Auntie Anne’s Pretzels
On the last day, we had fastfood at the airport for dinner. The Pizza Company isn’t bad at all. The Burger King is better than Singapore’s. (LARD LARD LARD). But the surprise came from Auntie Anne’s because who knew that a pretzel shop would sell deep-fried hotdog buns covered in pork floss? The Thais are damn original.
Moral of the story: Stay with roadside stalls.
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