Restaurant of the week: Paste or the treat of Bangkok
Until just a decade ago, the culinary panorama of bangkok It was roughly summed up in street food stalls for locals or intrepid visitors and more or less luxurious restaurants –and hopelessly inconsequential– for tourists and the local elite. Few transversal establishments that broke that almost insurmountable border . It was tedious for the Thai to deal with a foreign client who required less spicy and bold dishes and the result was invariably a fake kitchen , a kind of pastiche of Thai cuisine accommodated for the most numb palates.
But in Asia everything happens at breakneck speed and, especially in the last five years , the landscape has changed radically: bangkok has been populated by modern restaurants and with comfortable investments that offer Asian cuisine without complexes and, at the same time, it has been invaded by regional cuisines.
First they were the one from the north, the one from chiang mai , more elegant and refined. Later that of Isan, humble and powerful in equal parts, and then came the boom of the southern cuisine , its coconut milk and its extreme spicy . In all this phenomenon and in the evident “singapore” that the city suffers, we can frame the irruption of places such as paste and the kitchen of Bee Santongun and Australian Jason Bailey.
trying to preserve the authenticity of local flavors , have achieved a tremendously refined cuisine that delves into each of the ingredients so that nothing is missing and nothing significantly offends the palate. Absolutely masterful dishes like the 31-flavor omelet – almost soufflé – with Fraser Island crab and chili sauce, a highly refined and ethereal version of the classic crab omelette that is eaten in the street popularized by Jay Fay.
Or the Kalee Ped , the revision of a classic Lao roast duck curry , which is all about balance and one of the best curries you can try in the city, and scallops in salad with fresh mangosteen, lemongrass, peromia, young coconut and Thai wild almond . Pure harmony. All this in an elegant and tremendously bright dining room, with impeccable service and that endemic Thai friendliness.
Precise cocktails and global wines . European capital prices have been the toll to pay for so much excellence. Say goodbye to the old Bangkok: the new knock on the doors of Olympus.
Address: 999 Phloen Chit Rd., Bangkok Show map
Telephone: +66 2 656 1003
Schedule: From Monday to Sunday from 12:00 to 14:00 and from 18:30 to 23:00.
Half price: 900 – 1,000 THB per person