Best restaurants in Bangkok?

[seamus]

Thai food is OK ,but Indonesian food rocks. So if you like your food with a kick, Bali indonesian 15/3 Soi Ruam Rudi Phloenchit road. Not the best Indo food in the world, but good enough, rendang was good as was the gado gado & they have wot I would call Padang on a plate, very nice & only a 5 minute walk from Guess bar,if i have the address right LOL
Glen & Nat, will take you there next time I'm over !

Seamus

[mardhi]

Yes its called Bali - eaten there many times and good food - you feel like your in someones house not a swanky restaurant.

Cheers
Mardhi

[seamus]

Yes Mardhi a Man after My own heart when it comes to Indonesia !
Best GG pusy in the world LOL

[stogie bear]

(mardhi @ Apr. 17 2008,01:54)

(Preview Girls @ Apr. 17 2008,01:24)

For Italian, I like the place at far end of Sukhumvut Soi 13...

Are you talking about La Piola? This place is fantastic...

Yes thats the place - forget the one in Pattaya - its not mama in the kitchen - stick with soi 13 in BKK - not cheap but great home cooked italian food with zero attitude (so long as you finish your plate)

Cheers
Mardhi

I wonder if THIS guy is still there...

Oh, and you better book if you want a table.. or go very early.

Also - there's no menu as such. Just something chalked up on a small blackboard outside. If you don't like the special you're fucked!

Cold meat plate is the best I've seen.

[SamplerDoc]

Nana Burgers Rock

[seamus]

yes all the way out of ya arse the next morning ! LOL

[rxpharm]

Here is an old 2005 article about best Thai food restaurants in Bkk. I have tried the Polo Fried Chicken Restaurant and it was as good as they wrote in the article. Will attempt to locate some of the others mentioned as they sound great!

October 12, 2005
On the Streets of Bangkok, Two Guys Keep It Real
By R. W. APPLE Jr.
BANGKOK
THE guidebooks touted Bed Supperclub, where the hip and beautiful recline while they eat, and the airline magazine
featured the Australian Amanda Gale, who has set the town on its ear with her fusion food at Cy'an. But I was looking for
something more traditional, so as soon as I had settled into my hotel room, I picked up the phone and called Robert
Halliday, an American writer and gourmand who has lived here so long that he finds vacations without Thai food painful.
"Welcome back to Bangkok," he said. "Prepare to eat like a shark."
Soon, he and I, a pair of ample fellows, were accordioned into the back of a not-so-ample taxi, en route to Chote Chitr, a
modest establishment with only five tables, near the famous temple, Wat Suthat. "You won't believe the banana-flower
salad," he enthused as we wove through the city's notorious traffic. "It's one of the wonders of the world, up there with
the late Beethoven quartets."
A few years ago, Mr. Halliday had promised me an eating spree for the ages, but he had taken ill shortly after my wife,
Betsey, and I arrived. This time would prove to be different, as he led us into a hidden world of restaurants. At every
stop, we were the only Western customers. And at every stop, the food was cheap, simple and delicious.
With heavy teak chairs and gleaming black-and-white tiles, Chote Chitr reflects the quiet pride of a family that has owned
it for a century. Its clients are middle-class Thais, who can choose from no fewer than 400 dishes. We didn't sample them
all, but all things considered (such as the fact that this was lunch, not dinner) we gave a fairly decent account of
ourselves.
After a few crisp, garlicky wontons, we moved straight to mee krob, the sticky, sweet-and-spicy fried noodles found on
Thai menus from Delhi to Des Moines. These were another matter altogether: subtler, tarter, zestier. The secret, Mr.
Halliday quickly explained, was peel from a rare, sourish citrus fruit called som saa.
The banana-flower salad was stunning indeed, another example of a standard transformed. Prawns, chicken and the
shredded red buds of the banana tree, among other things, went into the dish, but its brilliance, as with all the best Thai
dishes, lay in the complexity of its seasonings - sour in the front of the mouth (tamarind pulp), fiery in the back (dried
chilies), and sweetly nutty at the top (coconut cream). Eating it left me punch-drunk with pleasure.
There was wonderful tom yum pla, that eye-poppingly vibrant fish soup. Hot, rich and sharp, it owed everything to the
liltingly fresh, vividly perfumed lemon grass, ka-prao or holy basil, coriander and kaffir lime leaves that flavored it, along
with the obligatory chili. A mildly piquant vegetable curry, too (still made from a paste prepared by hand every day). And
a small wok-fried bass. But for me, the pièce de résistance was a salad made from long green eggplants, makheua yao,
heady with smoke from the grill, plus shrimp, red shallots and palm sugar. An addictive sour tang was added by
fermented shrimp and lime juice.
For dessert, Mr. Halliday dashed around the corner to buy sticky rice, cooked in coconut cream and coconut sugar, at Kor
Panich, the city's oldest sweet shop. We ate it with Okrong mangoes, perhaps the world's most succulent and least
fibrous. No point in going overboard here, but I can't imagine a better dessert; it was an ideal finish to a meal of Thai
classics, cooked with consummate finesse, with a whole array of bitter, spicy, nutty, sweet, salty and sour flavors in
perfect balance and harmony.
Mr. Halliday, who is 62, was born in Englewood, N.J., and studied James Joyce and Russian at Columbia. Modern music
and exotic languages have always been his things; although his French and his Italian (except for musical terminology)
have never been very good, he learned Hungarian to read Bela Bartok, and his Thai is so fluent that it startles native
speakers.
After working in bookstores, at The Washington Post and at the Library of Congress, he took his severance pay when his
job at the library was eliminated and went to Bangkok, staying at first with the family of a Washington friend. From time
to time, he returned to the United States, but about 1986, he told me, "I decided I didn't want to live anywhere that
didn't have durian" - the remarkably smelly Thai fruit.
Gradually, he began writing on a variety of topics for the Bangkok Post, holding forth about favorite modern composers,
including Berio, Boulez, Dallapiccola and Elliott Carter, and about film, another of his passions. He has a multilingual
collection of more than 2,000 DVD's.
Curiously, he never signs his real name to his work, and he has resisted repeated urgings to compile his profound
knowledge of the history and intricacies of Thai food in a book. He styles himself Electric Eel (the Thai words escape me)
for film reviews, and in a long spell as restaurant reviewer, he used the self-deprecating pen name Ung-aang Talay,
which means Sea Toad.
Asked to explain, he replied, "I don't like to see my name in print."
Although shy and gentle in manner like the Thais among whom he lives, Mr. Halliday harbors strong opinions about Thai
food, which he expresses pungently. Thai restaurants abroad, he insisted, inevitably suffer from inferior ingredients. (He is not alone; David Thompson, the chef at Nahm, an extraordinary outpost of Thai gourmandise in London, flies supplies
in from Asia every week for the same reason.) The limes are too thick-skinned, in his view, the herbs are dull, and the
peppers, even when grown from imported Thai seeds, lack the authentic, in-your-kisser flavor and aroma.
Drive around with him, eat with him, and you soon know what contempt he feels for much that he sees in modern
Bangkok. Passing a KFC outlet, he uncharacteristically growled, "The restaurant that was there used to serve the best
duck and noodles in town." Discussing the bland, prettified, hopelessly dumbed-down version of Thai food served in local
tourist traps, he summed it up as "chicken à la king with a kaffir lime leaf floating on top."
But with the help of a remarkably heterogeneous group of friends, including taxi drivers and farmers as well as
intellectuals, he still finds much that is genuine. Some of his discoveries have become widely known because he has
championed them, like Polo Fried Chicken, a joint near the polo club in the diplomatic quarter. Once a humble three-table
stall, it now has an air-conditioned if garishly lighted dining room down the street, to which a corps of waiters ferries
platters of explosively hot green papaya salad, shredded beef fried with palm sugar and fish sauce and larb moo,
chopped pork flavored with mint, to feed hordes of workers from nearby offices at lunch.
All good, but what pulls them in is the chicken. Brined and liberally dusted with black pepper, it is fried until
golden-brown, crisp but not dry and papery, then showered with garlic, also fried. One of the marvels of this world-class
dish is the succulence of the chicken; another is the sweetness of the garlic, unmarred by burned bits.
I cede the final word to Betsey, a student of the genre like all true Southerners. "The best fried chicken I've ever eaten,"
she said as we plowed through a second platter. I think she might have danced with delight if she had not been too busy
eating.
CHUA KIM HENG, a noisy five-story poultry palace jammed between a freeway and an electrical substation, epitomizes
much that the Thais fancy in their restaurants. It is starkly utilitarian, with no idle decorative flourishes, it is known for
one dish - in its case, roast goose and duck - and its food is cooked by Thais of Chinese descent. Most are Teochow, with
roots on the southeastern China coast, like many of their brethren in Vietnamese and Singaporean restaurants.
Here the overture was khanom jeeb, steamed dumplings with exquisitely thin wrappers, served with tiny green Thai
chilies with a slight floral scent and a nuclear kick. (In pedagogic mode, Mr. Halliday warned, "Not too much chili, or it will
blot out the other flavors, like looking into the sun when you're trying to study a Monet.")
We ordered goose, steamed first to minimize fat, then braised. A plate of sliced dark meat came to the table, no bones in
sight, bathed in a thin sauce flavored with anise, black pepper and galangal, a ginger-like root. Fresh coriander on top
and a condiment of pickled chili and garlic on the side pointed up the lusciousness of the goose. Cabbage in a sauce
sharpened by lime and sesame came on the side as well.
With no drinks, dinner for three was $17.50. But in Bangkok as everywhere else, delicacies do cost more. At Pen, for
example, a mirror-walled, family-friendly place that serves scrumptious white wood mushrooms, parrot fish deep-fried
and surrounded by sambals (green mango shreds in tamarind sauce, fried and raw shallots and the like), and
astonishingly tender river prawns, nearly a foot long, deliciously charred over charcoal, the seafood prices are five times
those at the eateries along the Chao Phraya river. "Everything here is fresher and bigger," said Mr. Halliday, who
celebrates birthdays at Pen. Worth every baht, but beyond the means of many Thais.
Even plates of noodles can be expensive. Not at Thip Samai, a storefront noodle shop near the Golden Mount that
produces a definitive pad thai, free of the sweetness that often disfigures it in the West. But at Raan Jay Fai, a few doors
down, in a banal setting of fluorescent bulbs, hospital-green walls and linoleum-topped tables, an elderly, balletic cook
wearing a kind of knitted snood and working at a charcoal brazier turns out luxury pad khee mao, at a price. She allows
her rice noodles, broad ones, to catch a bit in the wok, giving them a pleasantly seared taste, adds basil leaves and then
dumps in prime seafood, including heroic lumps of crab meat that reminded me of Chesapeake Bay, what Mr. Halliday
called "shrimps as big as sheep," and fresh hearts of palm.
The thrifty, persnickety locals, who consider cheap, tasty noodles their birthright, term these "millionaire's food." Three
servings cost about $18.50.
Mr. Halliday had words of measured praise for a few fancy places, like the funky Asiatique, whose custardy tofu and
mellow yellow crab curry we had admired, and the sybaritic Celadon, whose elegant food exhibits "all the tastes and
subtleties Thais appreciate," in the words of its chef, Khun Veera. But he is a populist at heart.
So on the last day of our visit, we ate lunch on the run at the splendid Aw Taw Kaw market, a food-lover's must-see with
heaps of gorgeous tropical fruit, schools of brightly colored shellfish and bubbling caldrons of curry. It was raining, and
the plastic roof was leaking, but our guru cried happily, "Try this!" when he spied an aromatic green curry whose sauce,
as he observed, had been carefully cooked to prevent the coconut oil from rising to the surface. He insisted that we taste
a gang som or sour curry made from lotus stems, a lip-smacking eggplant stir-fry, crab steamed in a banana leaf with
coconut cream and curry spices, and some meltingly tender pork satay.
We did as we were told, and soon we scarcely noticed the rain.

This was posted as part of a thread back in Jan 2006.

Bon appetit!

[marshal]

That was excellent reading, but i should imagine i will have trouble trying to find these places!!
This thread is interesting because i had this idea that i will try some of the so called best top dollar places, but the more i think about, these restaurants i have to ask my self why?? Some of the best food on earth comes from south east asia. Why eat french or italian fine dining in bangkok? maybe i would like to try for comparison.
An open restaurant i always go to,is at the entrance to patpong 2(silom side).
This place sells duck and rice for 40 b a plate. These little places are great and very enjoyable.
I know that isn,t fine dining but bollocks to it. I can also see this thread including all great places,and so be it!!!
I shall try out stoogie bears indian recommendations as i love indian as well as thai.

[gart4571]

Bully's Pub-good burgers and fries
JUSMAGTHAI Grill-good burgers
Boubon Street-good burgers, good American burgers
NANA Burgers-good burgers
Bus Stop-good burgers, chicken breasts
NANA Hotel-good breakfasts buffet
Dynasty Inn-good American breakfasts
Sizzler-great "spricy" chicken
Outback-great steaks
The little storefront on Soi leading to Soi Cowboy-great
fish and chips

[MARKUK]

BKK has great restaurants for me -

Indian - Rembrandt or Mrs Balbirs
Italian - Basilico
Lebanese -Beirut
Thai - House Number 1
British Pub Grub - Black Swan
Ribs - Great American Rib

and best value of all the sunday eat and drink as much as you like at the Marriott on the river.

[Guest]

High above the Silom District of Bangkok and on the 63rd floor of the State Tower you shall find one of the best restaurants in the World...I Promise You !

Sirocco is a truly magnificent venue and the food is as good as I have eaten anywhere in my life.

Book a few days in advance.

My Favourite Restaurant In the World

[katoeylover]

Bet you get laid after you take your special one there!

[marshal]

Very swanky What happens when it rains?

No only kidding, it looks really nice and the views outstanding! I'll add it to the short list. cheers.

[Otho]

It does seem a shame to eat European food when you're in BKK, but I can never resist lunch at Basilico, the Italian restaurant on Soi 33.

Very nice, sophisticated airy place with a conservatory out the front and a more intimate space in the back. Great attention to the little details that make all the difference. Does all the usual pizzas and pastas but they're simply the best. Some of the pizza toppings are inventive - try a pizza carbonara. The usual Italian standards on the a la carte, but again they're beautifully done. The other day I had spiedini di pesce - grilled mixed fish kebabs, perfectly cooked and herbed with delicious garlicky vegetables on the side.

I also ordered a lentil and Italian sausage soup, waited a while for it and the waiter returned looking woeful. "We made it but I'm not happy with it. I cannot serve it to you," he said, which impressed me greatly. Instead he offered me a lobster soup, which was wonderfully delicate and had a delicious, generous chunk of lobster meat in it. And although they didn't advertise it, I noticed on the bill that they'd only charged me for the considerably cheaper lentil soup. That's classy.

[marshal]

Otho i'd be pretty impressed if the kitchen/restaurant team refused to serve me a dish they were not happy with!! That tells you a lot about the place!!