Bangkok Thailand


Bangkok Thailand

Bangkok: In this Blog…disappointment in our favourite Bangkok restaurant but the discovery of one even better plus recipes for Papaya Salad, Banana Flower Salad and Deep Fried Bass with Chilli and Lime Sauce.
We were looking forward to Bangkok for many reasons but we were mostly looking forward to Bangkok so we could eat our favorite dish in our favourite restaurant. The resturant is Aquatini which sits right on the river and the dish Pla Kapong Lui Suan (Deep fried sea bass with chilli and lime sauce) we had eaten this there a year ago and it was sublime.
 
When we arrived the restaurant was having a large part of the floor relaid so most of it was cordoned off which included all of the area near the river. This was a little disappointing as one of the great things about this place is sitting next to the river at dusk drinking a cool Singa and watching the passing traffic on the Chao Praya. Never mind – we understand that works need to happen so we sat at our table surrounded by work hoardings and ordered our much anticipated dinner. 

Things at the Aquatini that night were just not operating smoothly, the drinks we ordered took forever to arrive and when they did were not correct, in the end we had to ask 3 times  to get a drink, they then delivered the wrong meals to our table and when our fish finally arrived it was dry and fatty, it seemed to me it had been pre – cooked and then heated up rather than cooked to order, the fairly odinary sauce had barely had a hint of chilli and obviously made to suit a western palette. By doing this they totally ruined the dish. Our much awaited Pla Kapong Lui Suan was in fact so ordinary that we didn’t finish it. 

The fawlty towers act in the restaurant did however continue, when we expressed disappointment in the meal we were told we obviously ordered something different last time (we didn’t as I had specifically written the name of the dish down when we had eaten it) and for a finale when the bill arrived they had billed us for a number of items we did not order. We walked away sacratching our heads and wandering what has gone wrong at what was once such a nice restaurant and vowing not to return.

This left us in a dilemma as finding good Thai food in the Phra Athit / Khao San area is a tad tricky until we stumbled upon a fabulous little restaurant called Hemlock a bit further up Phra Athit Road.
Here we dined on amazing banana flower salad, pork ribs, papaya salad and best of all we discovered Pla Kapong Lui Suan done as it should be and absolutely wonderful. I could also get a decent glass of red without breaking the bank.

So in the end we found a restaurant that is arguably better than the Aquatini, it was certainly cheaper and the service was excellent.

For Information on Travelling In Thailand Read Our Thailand Travel Guides