These days, people naturally assume I take all my meals outside the comfort of the home; which is technically untrue, since I do eat home-cooked food at least during half the week; it is just that I’m not the one doing the cooking. That’s why she’s the better half, you see. While our usual go-to pizza service is the rather decent Lupa (especially with the 2 for 1.5 deal), we can’t afford eat to pizza every night – waist-wise – and there aren’t any formidable (decent yes, but not formidable) Indian or Chinese take-aways around Kilburn.

I can’t remember how we first came across it, either via the Hungry House portal or ordering from the menu shoved through the front-door, but I do remember making the first visit there sometime during the winter break.

The restaurant doesn’t look unlike any Thai restaurant, decent sized, fitting around 15 to 20 tables, rose wood, here, there, and an all Thai staff both friendly and neighborly. We’ve eaten at Bhan Thai a number of times, both sitting in and take-away, and with the reasonable, take-away friendly, market-competitive prices, and of course the decent food, I felt it deserved writing about.

Kai Yang, £6.70 and Nau Nam Tok, £6.70.

Kai Yang is de-boned chicken leg, marinated in sauces, spices and honey then grilled and served with sweet chilli sauce… resulting in tender pieces of pleasingly well marinated, with a touch of spice and sweetness, that goes very well with a bowl of sticky rice.

Nau nam tok is essentially a spicy beef salad, made with onions, coriander, lemon grass, ground chilli, ground roasted rice, lemon juice, sugar and fish sauce, that was rather mild for a Thai spicy salad, and leaned on the sweet and zesty side.

Steamed Sea bass with Lemon Sauce, £12.50.

The sauce was really nice, chilli and citrus with just a touch of sweetness. We brainstormed it and thought alot of lime, bergamut and lemongrass was involved.

Special fried rice with prawn, squid (and chicken I think), £6 and Pad Thai, £4.50.

Fly-rice champion. This is their best dish, in my opinion, and good fried rice is a difficult thing to pull off. Just the right amount of oil, a nice fragrance perhaps from the seafood, and I think there was a nice depth of flavour to it. Salty, a touch of citrus, I can’t quite work out what all the signals meant, but it was abit like having really good pan-fried carrot cake. I’ve had it a couple more times after this visit, and it’s a good plate of fried rice.

For the pad thai, I believe they use chilli, garlic, bamboo shoots, vegetables flavoured with sauces and hot basil leaves… giving rise to that hot and sour and spicy and peanuty flavour which is my interpretation of what Pad Thai, and the general flavour palate of Thai food is built on. I think the best Pad Thai is at Addies Thai Cafe in Earls Court, which is incidentally my favourite Thai in London.

Chicken Curry Rice, £5

And I quote:

kaeng panaeng with chicken
a mild, aromatic curry based on ground peanut cooked with lime leaves, curry paste and coconut cream to enhance the rich flavour and has added red and green peppers for extra colour.

It was pretty good curry. Not over the top, but not bad.

Soup and noodles.

Not entirely sure what it’s called on the menu, but their hot and sour soups are pretty hot and sour, which is to say it will give your buds a tingle.

I ordered the Weeping Tiger, which is sirloin steak, Thai-style, weeping on a sizzling hot plate (but in a box), for take-away a couple of nights ago, that featured alot of potent chopped chilli balanced against alot of citrus, and I really liked it too, as it also went really well with a bowl of sticky rice. Order the special fried rice with seafood and whatever meat they are willing to add to it, if you are in the area, searching for a quiet, half-decent Thai restaurant in St John’s Wood, Bhan Thai is a safe bet.

The Gist of It

Bhan Thai
Thai, take-away, easy. £12pp.
103 Boundary Road NW8 0RG
tel.: +44(0)2076241485
Tube: Kilburn High Road

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Food is much more accessible and democratic over on the right side of the Pacific. There is so much diversity, that at times, I find it ironic that the gourmet awakening (of sorts) is taking place in London, where food blogs are as plentiful as fishes, as opposed to the rest of Asia. That might just be an indication of how advanced the broadband networks are in London however or perhaps we crave the good life because we feel the dearth. Oh how I miss Asia.

There are food courts in the shopping centres, and then there are the stand alone market spaces erected specifically for a plethora of hawkers to sell in the same space. Whatever the permutations might be, the general rule of thumb across stalls would invariably be dirt cheap pricing (I’d imagine to stay competitive with their neighbours), often one plate meals, and one would buy food, drink and dessert from separate stalls. It is like a curating form of eating, and it’s an experience which I miss sorely.

Food courts were a way of life for me, memorable since we would visit every Sunday morning. Everybody whose anybody would bump into everybody, people had their preferred stalls, and it was always a precarious game to arrive early to jostle for tables. My family loved a particular char kuey tiaw hawker, others were into lao su fen soup (silver needle noodles¹. A plate of Kuala Belait’s finest char kuey tiaw would set you back no more than $1.50 (about 75p), anymore would be daylight robbery. What else do you do after morning mass right?

Setting foot on to large warehouse space on the 2nd floor of Pacific Plaza brought back pleasant childhood memories. It’s not as cramped as most Asian food courts (being brand spanking new), features alot less food stalls (whose number should increase with time) and it lacks the history and buzz of a living breathing food machine. It’s still in infancy afterall, but its a good start. Seemingly rising from the ashes of the now defunct, but much loved, Oriental City², I suppose many view this complex as its spiritual successor. Some of Oriental City’s original tenants have even set up new operations at PP.

It opened it’s doors toward the tail end of 2009, since then, I’ve returned on a few separate occasions to try the different cuisines on offer, the missus in particular loves PP, a place to grab a quick bite. Half the hall remains unoccupied (as of July 2010) however, and I’m a little disappointed that it has stayed relatively obscure throughout its short tenure. PP deserves more human traffic. There are merely eight stalls open for business, most with obvious names indicating their representative cuisines : Spicy Thai (for Thai), NP Star Snack Bar (Malaysian), China House (Chinese), Hot Korean (Korean), Shan (Japanese), Nambu (Japanese); Seleramu (Malaysian) and Darjeeling Momo (Tibetan). Also, there is a pretty capable Japanese bakery on the ground floor, Tetote Factory, which sells rather good ‘Asian influenced Western’ bread and cakes. Prices amongst the stalls are competitive, averaging £7 for a one plate meal, less for smaller dishes. I’ve compiled this report from three visits.

China House

The menu is overly long, and is visually laid out across the entire front of the shop. It also appears to be the largest of the stalls in PP, taking up what looks like four individuals units. They offer a mix of Cantonese and Sichuan dishes, and dim sum.

‘Special’ Shuimai Dumpling.

It’s nothing more than a prawn and pork shuimai really, fleshy, the bursting flavour of prawns, I didn’t expect it to rival some of the city favs but this was pretty good.

Minced pork on rice with egg (?)

This was from one of my earlier visits (which was way back in May) and I can’t seem to remember what it was called. And I didn’t take notes. I do however have this impression that it was a little like a steamed sausage mince…

‘Saliva’ Chicken.

One from the Sichuan section, nutty, spicy, oily and interestingly enough, the chicken (Bai Zhan) was surprisingly good, managing to be juicy, silky with that lively taste of spring chicken. No Uncle Lims³ however, but not bad.

Soya Chicken rice.

And it’s the same story with the chicken rice, the chicken was soft (soft being a major criteria at least for me), not bad but not quite the best around. I won’t pontificate about the merits of what is a pretty standard one plate meal.

Hot Korean

Spicy Cod with egg fried rice.

The portions were huge! For £6.80 it was a steal, the batter was fried to a bubbly crunch, softened by a runny spicy sauce. Peppery, but also a tad too much salt however, my mouth was beginning to dry out a little, and I wonder if the chef had been a little liberal with the MSG. I appreciated that the rice was only shallow-fried, it maintained the creamy starchiness of steamed rice, as opposed to individual rice grains. Though, if you were a purist, it shouldn’t be bland and sticky, it should be fried overnight rice, grainy, oily, rah, rah, rah.

Kimchi pancake with seafood.

Tremendously generous servings, at £3.50, yet another steal. Dough-ey, and a little bitterness perhaps from the kimchi. It had a home-made feel about it which I enjoyed.

Spicy Thai

The better half really rates this stall, she was a regular at its former output in Finchley Road.

Jungle Curry with Duck

And I am inclined to agree. Bamboo shoots, aubergines with a citrus punch and a mildly peppery kick helped to make the flossy duck an appetising treat.

Tom Yam Soup.

A tomato based soup, bamboo shoots mushrooms, spring onions, red peppers and coconut milk. Sweet, sour and mildly spicy.

Tom Ka Gai

Or a spicy chicken soup, distinctive due to it’s creamy white appearance. It smelled great too, wonderful aromas of coriander and coconut milk; appetising stuff.

The quality of food across the stalls is good enough, but that’s besides the point when the bottomline is so slim. At the moment, Pacific Plaza is still a barren platform and a far cry from what Oriental City once was, but I’m hoping that with time, perhaps someday PP will become a destination for families and friends to go for cheap and diverse Asian food. I suppose, that has to start with the local communities around Wembley, to embrace it before the rest of London does, and hopefully establish a constant flow of people to encourage even more independent operations to occupy the empty stalls, and thus create more options for the prospective diner. I think it can only happen if people are looking for the next Oriental City, and I suspect many of you share my affection regarding lively food courts. I do hope it does not continue to remain relatively empty, and that popularity picks up as word of mouth spreads.

Wembley is more accessible than Colindale I imagine, and if you happened to be in the area (England play Hungary on 11th August, and the Charity Shield is a few days before), I recommend hopping across the road to PP to fill up your tanks either before or after the game, it won’t break your wallet, and is ultimately better than the rip-me-off grub served inside the stadium.

The Gist of It

Pacific Plaza
From around the Pacific, £12pp
Engineers Way HA9 0EG
Tel: +44 (0) 207 409 7747
Tube: Wembley Park

News of the Pacific: North/South Food ; Danyul.net ; Will Eat for Money ; Meemalee’s Kitchen ; Randomness Guide to London ; Ferret Fabrications ; Tamarind and Thyme ; It Ends with Dovi

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Forty five minutes after exiting Temple tube station, I am still wandering around the area. I could have sworn I have walked past Buddha bar before – which faces the river – but for the life of me, all I can see is a Walkabout. Defying pride, I finally make the call to the restaurant for directions; they tell me I need to keep walking right, and then some.

Ah, there it is, under a bridge.

At first I thought the PR bods were sending me to a cocktail bar for a round of drinks, even Buddha Bar’s website suggests a sort of lounge with a kitchen attached to it. My assumptions were only solidified upon entry – Loud, dark, body hugging waitress outfits and a cloakroom. The reception area is very cosy, probably suggesting an equally cosy restaurant.

And then I see this guy:

The music got louder and louder as I passed through to the dining area – everything I had thought Buddha bar was, well it wasn’t. The high ceilings looked at least a couple of storeys high, and it was dominated by a huge golden Buddha washed in dim blue and red light. My eyes continually scanned the room, it looked like as if the tea house stage built for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had been converted into a club with the dance floor populated by tables. As my senses became saturated with the setting, I let out a silent ‘wow’, this place looks amazing.

For such a huge restaurant, they sure skimmed on the furniture and fittings. The tables were ridiculously small as it seemed to only just fit two menus. Flipping through it, I could barely see a thing. The light was terrible, so bad that the waitresses carried around mini torch lights while they navigated the dark like ushers in a cinema. Some diners were handed these mini torch lights, while I illuminated mine with an iPhone. I enjoyed the chill-out tracks oozing out from the ultra bass speakers but when I have to shout at my partner when ordering, that’s not usually a good sign for a restaurant. Our waitress brings around a bowl of edamame beans seasoned in salt and chilli – not bad. I ask for some water – leaning over – she still can’t hear me. Sigh, I shout louder. At this point, I can’t seem to take Buddha Bar seriously as a restaurant, the ambiance was becoming a distraction, and I couldn’t concentrate on my appetite, at all. In my mind, it’s still a cocktail lounge with a kitchen attached to it. Speaking of food, the menu is just about as confusing. They describe themselves as serving ‘Pan-Asian’ cuisine, which translates to sushi for starters and Thai for mains. Glancing at the menu prices which I could see, I was squinting to read it again as the prices seemed a little exorbitant.

The taster menu was available for £65 per person – equivalent to Michelin prices. I get the feeling that food is meant to be shared, everything is doubly pricy. Anyway, the sushi menu looked quite so formidable with a wide selection of traditional nigiris and sashimis, as well as a small selection of sushi rolls. Nothing in the hot starters section caught my eye, and so our meal began with a sushi selection.

The waitress seemed very proud of the toro (Belly tuna, the top of the list of sushi, and the most expensive at £4.50 per piece), she exclaimed that it was an item rarely available as their chefs only serve it when they get stock that was of high enough quality. I asked for two, she strongly recommended six and we settled with four. Accompanying the toro were turbot, unagi, seared lobster and wasabi tempura prawn roll. I also ordered scallop which never came and I believe that was drowned out by the music. As this meal was free, I didn’t really want to take the mickey and order too much. The sushi is terribly pricy, this platter had already clocked in at nearly £45.

I started with the wasabi prawns – not bad at all, a creamy wasabi mayo, the tempura was a powdery crunch and the rice had good stickiness. My mouth was beginning to water. Next up, the prized toro …. Ok, wow. It was surprisingly amazing. It disintegrated in my mouth, the quality of the fish was superb, oily, fatty, odourless; the toro was an absolute beauty that was cut to perfection. The rest of the platter gave the similar melt in your mouthness, the unagi was loaded with sweet soya flavours, the turbot was another smooth silk layered on rice and the seared lobster roll required eyebrows to be raised. I found myself nodding along, I almost don’t want to admit it, partly because I didn’t expect food to taste half as good, but also partly because I couldn’t see what I was eating; but dude….. that was one of the best sushi platters I’ve ever had in London. One expensive sushi platter, if for some reason my conscience hadn’t kicked in, I probably would have ordered eight more pieces of toro.

After the startlingly good sushi, I was really looking forward to what they could achieve with the cooking. Service was a little slow, we waited about half an hour before the food started showing up. Mains were roast black cod in sweet miso (£23.50), Beef fillet teppanyaki (£30) and crispy baby squid (£11) accompanied by egg fried rice and rice noodles.

Let’s start with the squid – yeah it wasn’t too bad, a little heavy on the salt, but overall good crispiness and flavour. The fillet of beef was so-so. Overpriced, overcooked and mushy. It came with an under fermented kimchi, there’s abit of mango flavour in the sweet sauce as well, where I expected sizzling smokiness (as it was advertised as a teppanyaki), I was greeted with a uninspired pan-fried dish. Ordinary at best. The black cod miso (£23.50) is a little cheaper than the Nobu original (£28). It looks nearly identical save for the drops of sweet miso on the side. Yeah, initial impressions exhibited the signature melt in your mouth flakiness with the deep miso flavours, grainy texture with just the hint of acidity. The fish was cooked well – just a tad under – I could still taste the fatty bits so that’s good. Its missing abit of the magic, a good imitation but an imitation nonetheless. Not as clinical as the original, the sauce is over smothered in my opinion, a tad too sweet, too intense and I think the fish needs abit more broiling. Close but no cigar. The side dishes were the dark horse – the egg fried rice was full flavoured and came with delicious large shrimps (lots of them) and the rice noodles were bouncilicious. The noodles were so consistent that the strands were impossibly long and hard to break – a good sign.

Um, yeah so just when I was about to take Buddha Bar seriously, the main courses let me down abit. Don’t get me wrong though, the mains actually tasted ok, there were no missteps or basic errors, fish tasted like fish and so forth, but it wasn’t anything spectacular, unlike the sushi. Although, I’ll note that the portions were deceptively large, we failed to finish everything on the table. On the whole, being mindful of how expensive this meal could be, I thought it was above average.

With food finally out of the way, I began to take in the rest of the unorthodox ambiance, its like a club where people are boogieing sitting down. I realised that the price premium wasn’t for the food, but it was most definitely for everything else. Buddha Bar is a swanky place to celebrate a special occasion, or more appropriately, it’s the swanky place to wow your first date. The darkness, loud chillout music and matrix-like atmosphere is the perfect distraction to hide first date jitters. Food is passable albeit overpriced; I would recommend sticking to working up the liquid courage and the sushi for food. Embrace the suggestive energy, feel free to be somebody else and really just have a blast. Inside Buddha Bar, everyone is leaning over to whisper something, and if you want to make that move, all I’m saying is that the stage is already set and you should lean over and make that move.

PS: Full set of photographs can be seen on flickr.

The Gist of It

Buddha Bar official site
£80 per person plus drinks
8 Victoria Embankment
WC2R 2AB
Tel: 020 3371 7777
Tube: Temple (and keep walking right till you see the bridge)

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Nahm Official site
The Halkin SW1X 7DJ +44 (0) 20 7333 1234
Lunch £20pp  Dinner £60 pp

Nahm is the only Thai restaurant in London to have a michelin sparkle around it’s neck. The restaurant is of course Chef David Thompson’s labour of love; Legend has it that the Australian chef who was once ‘seduced by the gracious country‘ spent many moons training under the guiding hand of an elder matriarch who cooked for the Royal Thai family. The man’s story is an inspired one and his dedication to Thai food is perhaps only rivalled by his head chef at Nahm, Matthew Albert. I was fortunate enough to be invited to sample Nahm’s food and I was expecting nothing less than regality.

A Royal Amusement

I don’t do well with invites, it gives me the jitters. How am I suppose to be completely objective with this stuff? Ah well, I do try. I’m following Helen the world foodie guide’s lead who was also invited on a separate occasion.

The marble floors and polished woods were all bathed in full regal glory under the golden hued lights and amazingly large golden pillars. After all, Nahm is based on age old royal traditions, so one should feel suitably like a King when stepping through to the restaurant.

The front of house recommended we go with the Namn Arharn, which I intepreted as a kind of degustation style taster menu what with the michelin conventions and all. But it wasn’t. The Nahm Arharn allowed you to pick five courses from the a la carte, and all the dishes were to be shared by the table. This included a soup, a salad, a relish, a curry and a stir fry. It also includes additional appetiser course as well. Oh and the all important jasmine fragrant rice.

Wonderful, I am in anticipation of a full on banquet now, but first an amuse bouche in the form of a sweet and savoury concoction of minced meat over a slice of pineapple, with coriander to top it all off. This was interestingly appetising as the caramelised palm sugar blended well with the peanut flavours. There was a faint hint of heat in my aftertaste too – good start.

The theme of salt.

So, the first dish to land on our table were the salt chicken wafers, with longans and thai basil. A light crispy crunch to the wafers and I could taste green curry heat and aromatic coriander flavours. I was looking for the sweet longans in the wafer, but the pieces weren’t enough and while the intensity of the salt chicken was appetising, at first, it quickly became much too salty for me, to the point where the salt had completely drowned out the sweetness of the longan. Water, water.

After we finished up on this little appetiser dish, our waiters proceeded to lay out all the rest of the dishes on the table. She then took the time to explain what each dish was, and how to best enjoy it (apart from me just stuffing it all in one go) with the relishes on the side. Still feeling a tad dry from the salt infusion earlier on, I started with the hot and sour, dtom yam soup, made with mussels, shrimp paste, tomatoes, thai basil and coriander, the dtom yam is the quintessential Thai dish and perhaps the best way for a chef to showcase his talents in balancing the dominant flavours in Thai cooking what with the savoury, the sweet and the spicy.

Oh, the chilli is indeed intense as I immediately felt the burn – a good thing for clearing up the sinuses. I do appreciate the flavours which the mussels contribute to the soup, but phew, like the salty chicken before it, this one was just a little too salty for me, to the point where it was beginning to compete with the chilli and drown out the rest of the good spices in this delicate balancing act of strong flavours. In the end, I was reaching for more water as the scales tipped over the salty scale.

The lobster salad

I should mention that the staff are excellent. Friendly, helpful and one could tell that they share a similar passion for Thai food as their chefs. I was a little disappointed with the soup, but perhaps we’ll do better with the mains. Starting with the young ginger and lobster salad. The brightness of the citrus was a welcomed change, with the shallots giving it a fresh edge. The light ginger broth which accompanied the dish helped to moisten things up, however, Matt could have been a little more generous with the lobster as I felt a little embarrassed to be digging around for the few shredded pieces, when whole lobster tail chunks would have made for a more inspiring, and tasteful salad.

Relishing it

I love rice. I grew up with it, afterall. Some people tend to go with brown rice because it’s healthier but nothing beats great thai fragrant rice, like thai fragrant rice. I’ve one of these people who likes his bowl of rice to be pristine at the start of a meal (ie: sauce on side, not on top) , but will lovingly spread any relishes or gravies when Im eating.

Going around the table to the next dish is a Chiang Mai relish with minced pork and tomatoes served with grilled trout. This is much better. The mince pork relish is an excellent companion with the rice, one would have preferred the pomfret to the trout; but that’s just me. The sweetness of the palm sugar is beautifully balanced against the savoury muscle of the garlic, shallots and chilli, giving it a sweet taste as it hits your mouth and just a little bit of the heat as it hits the throat. The graininess was great too and the chunky sauce was delightfully appetising, really reminded me of my surrealistic experiences as a child when my folks took me to Thai restaurants.

Next up were the grilled scottish scallops with garlic, chilli and lime sauce. It had a rrp of £18.50 on the menu, £2 supplement to the £55pp Nahm Arharn, and we were served with two scallop shells, hm, pricy stuff.

The scallops were really juicy, as one might expect and the sizzling citrusy soup was great. Not entirely certain what the slices were (I want to say mango), it did well to bring a edgey dynamic to the palette. It’s a little more intense than usual, but I quite enjoyed the sharp tanginess against the sweet scallops.

Let the curry be the acid test

Thai restaurants need to have great curry. It’s where all that strong flavours finally gets to delicately meld together. If there was one dish that had to be good, it had better be this one.

I opted for the red curry of roast duck with longans and thai basil. And thankfully this did not disappoint. The rich red curry was alot milder than I had anticipated, probably due to the juices from the longan, imparting a slight sweetness to the curry. I appreciated the thick graininess to the mix and I was thoroughly impressed with the soft duck – which was now a wide gamut of sweet and spicy flavours. This was the best dish of the lot.

There is always room for pudding and little bit more

I was royally stuffed at the end of the meal, but I always manage to find abit of room for dessert. That does explain why I don’t fit into the jeans I bought last month anymore.

The good stuff were the mango slices layered on top of sticky rice. Those golden slices were juicy and full of honey-like flavours. So much so, I might have mistaken them for Filipino mangoes (nb: Filipino mangoes are really awesome.), they went well with the savoury rice, and like a yin to a yang, this was fantastic.

The not so good stuff was the rather confusing coconut jelly with rambutans steeped in perfumed syrup. The jelly was far too tough as it very nearly slipped away from the plate as I tried to cut into it, and I didnt quite understand the need for fried shallots in an almost sour ‘perfumed’ syrupy soup with which the rambutans swam in.

All in all, I had a good meal at Nahm. There were certainly highlights but at the same time, there were a few dishes where I felt could have been better. You’ll forgive me for my biasness being a complimentary meal, however in my struggle for the ever objective opinion, I found the flavours lacking balance. Given that Thai flavours of strong on strong is a difficult one to manage and to get right, I felt that every dish seemed to have a tad too much of an overriding component. While this imbalance means an eye-openingly intense mouthful, upon first tasting; it does tend to drown out the rest of the variety of flavours, leading me to experience a kind of flavour fatigue and drinking more water than necessary to cleanse the palette. Purists might disagree with me, hmm, I dont know, what do you think?

A dinner at Nahm does not come cheap and you’re looking at about £60 per head, though a two course lunch is a tad more affordable at under £20 per head. Thank you David, Matt and Diana for the wonderful meal, I thoroughly enjoyed it, however I need to be honest: There are flashes of brilliant Thai food here that will give one a mild rush, just not a sizzling sinus clearing one.

The Gist of It.

Nahm Official site
The Halkin SW1X 7DJ +44 (0) 20 7333 1234
Lunch £20pp  Dinner £50 pp