Baan Tepa, Bangkok
This was my last restaurant booking in this Thailand trip. The restaurant occupies a nice building and has a large herb and vegetable garden behind. The lady who welcomed me, told me the garden could host private banquet. When I arrived, it was still bright. I could imagine it would be a romantic view at nighttime with the light on.
Garden
I was offered a chance to look into their kitchen: unsurprisingly, it was a very large kitchen with many tools and equipment. Overall, it felt like a studio for developing new courses. One young chef showed a table of vegetable and herb ingredients. I was not sure if they were all the ingredients used that night for the set, but it was a cute show or show-off. The menu was a simple and nice decorative two pages, dishes and beverages. In fact, it was not a very large set. I happily ordered the non-alcohol pairing as well.
Ingredients and menu
Halfway through the dinner, I got a cute prawn ‘Anatomy of a River Prawn’. As reflected in the name, everything was edible apart from the shell of the head. The main body was grilled prawn covered by the Gaeng Som curry. This is a nice combination, because the curry was not too spicy but promoted the flavour of prawn very well. The head was like a small salad providing some freshness and sour flavour to contrast the main body. Last the tail was also edible, which added a crispy texture.
Anatomy of a River Prawn - Grilled River Prawn, Gaeng Som, Fermented Bamboo, Pickled Garlic, Crispy Omelet
Then we get a light freshness bite before main ‘White Lotus’. After almost two weeks in Thailand, I found no surprise on pre-main desserts. I liked such idea which provide a pause and most importantly freshen the palate. The dish here had a strong earthy tone, in both taste and view. I also notice the restaurant used many fermentations including this dish. The entire plate completely washed out the rich flavour from the previous prawn (picture above), I found it very satisfying.
White Lotus - Jicama, Lotus Roots, Snow Mushroom, Fermented Jicama Granita
The main for the night was beef and curry paired with rice. I could see this is a simple but a fancy version of traditional Thai main dish, meat + rice. The chef put strong season on the wagyu beef steaks and bunched them with cucumber-like vegetables, so there was interesting chewing experience between the meat fibre and vegetable fibre. The curry sauce went well with the beef, but especially better with the bamboo-smelled rice, because the sauce was very thick with spicy kick. Regarding the presentation, the ‘Mosaic’ is a round shaped, but it will be even cuter if they can make it a square shaped.
Blackened Curry, Wagyu Beef Mosaic paired with Bamboo Leaf Smoked Jasmine Rice
This restaurant certainly emphasised on vegetables and herbs and used fermentation in almost all dishes. This gave a great continuous story in the set. However, similar to chili, fermentation can be very personal taste, especially some diners might simply dislike it, even if the chef balanced fermentation with other flavour like curry or root-based fresh-focused vegetable such as lotus. To give a simple score, I enjoyed this set, but I found a similar problem on the desserts that are not sweet in a strange way, similar to those in Gaa. Maybe I should just not order any desserts in high-end restaurants in Thailand, or simply suggest them serve fresh fruit plates, like many Japanese places.
🐼 Score: 4/5
