I was in Bangkok on the weekend. It has been nearly 12 months since I spent few days vacation in Bangkok, a city where I spent four years working and living from 2010 to 2015. It was good time to catch up with friends and to try new places.
Friend mentioned this new Thai cuisine restaurant chain that has become quite popular, with branches in most of the key shopping malls in Bangkok including the newly opened Icon Siam. I walked past the Icon Siam branch on Sunday lunchtime and there was a queue waiting to get in.
So today I decided to head to the branch at Emquartier for early lunch to avoid the lunchtime crowd. It says on the website that their restaurants open at 10am, so 11am would be just ideal.
The menu is quite extensive with mainly Thai food but it also have pasta dishes done in Thai fusion.
So many choices but a solo diner can only try two dishes – I can’t let food go to waste so mere sampling of dishes would not do for me. It is also sacrilegious to let food go to waste when hunger abounds.
After harrumphing for 10 minutes I finally settled for pomelo salad with crispy prawns ( have had somtum at Somtum Der the past couple of days) and beef green curry with small bowl of rice berry rice.
The pomelo salad serving was very generous with large chunks of pomelo. The crispy prawns was crunchy. The sauce that came with the salad was not your typical Thai fish sauce with lime and chili. Rather it was caramelised sweetness to it with bit of heat. It initially tasted good but after a few spoonful, it was just too sweet and thick. I have to reached out to the pomelo to use the freshness to cut down on the sweetness.
The beef green curry appeared halfway through me getting through the sweetness of he pomelo salad.
When I first arrived in Bangkok some 8 years ago and ordered my first green curry, I was taken by surprise how watery the green curry was. In Australia, the green curry like the rest of the yellow curry, red curry and panang curry were thick and sweet. The thought was that the sweetness was to cater to the Australian taste – helps to cut down the heat.
At Kub Kao Kub Pla, the green curry was thick and dense and very sweet. The beef was tender and generous portions. The green eggplants were nice and plump. But alas, the sweetness was too overwhelming for me.
Given my limited sampling, I must say that the ingredients used by the restaurant are good quality and they are very generous with the portions. But they need to cut back slightly on the sweetness of their dishes to make it less overpowering and more enjoyable. I always equate Thai food with light tangy taste especially the salads which open up one’s appetite but unfortunately the salad I had today did the opposite.
The prices are quite reasonable given the generous portions. Two dishes with small bowl of rice and coconut smoothie cane to less than THB800 or SG32.
chingsmiley 