Thailand and Cambodia Trip Nov 2010

I know I have been MIA for a bit but I recently went on vacation to Thailand and Cambodia and am only now getting back in to gear.  While the food in SE Asia is amazing everywhere, I will just highlight where I stayed and a few places I went to:

Bangkok

LeBua at State Tower  1055 Silom Road, Bangkok, 10500, Thailand, 02-624 9999

I can not say enough about LeBua.  It is simply the most fantastic hotel I have ever stayed at.  The rooms are spacious, with amazingly comfortable beds and huge marble bathrooms.  The service is impeccable.  When I told them we had an early flight out and would miss the breakfast buffet, they packed us each boxed breakfasts complete with sandwiches with the crust cut off, a bunch of pastries, yogurt, hard boiled egg, and juice.  But the actual breakfast there is AMAZ-BALLS.  It's got anything you can think of: omelet station, 100 different pastries, various dim sum, sushi, 6 different fresh juices, deviled eggs, meats and cheeses, carving station, thai food, indian food, lots of different kinds of yogurt parafaits, and salad bar.  I could have stayed there all day.  We also ordered room service the night we got there late.  I will say that it's definitely more expensive than in regular restaurants and definitely much more expensive than street food.  But the food was quite tasty and one of the better room service meals I've had.  The top floor of the hotel is also known as the Skybar and the views are quite breathtaking.  You can see almost all of the city and their bright lights.  The drinks at the bar are very expensive ($15) and it's quite a scene, but worth visiting.

We also went to the Chatuchuck market which is this amazing outdoor street market 30 outside of Bangkok.  Inside there is a small "food court" with a bunch of street food.  I had a stir fried noodles, which were basically wide noodles with some veggies and chicken in a basic brown sauce.  It was pretty good and cost about $3.  I would have loved to explore and eaten more street food, maybe next time.

Siem Reap

This was my favorite city by favorite city on this trip.  We stayed at the beautiful Pavillon D'Orient.   The food there is much more mild and less spicy than Thai food.  Our hotel was also great and they had free breakfast every morning.  They had various fruit and croissants and then offered your choice of egg, fried rice, or noodle soup.  I started off getting eggs and I should have known that you shouldn't usually get something that a country is not known for.  The omelet was ok, but not great and the scrambled eggs were a bit dry.  So my last day there I got the chicken fried rice and Aarti got the noodle soup and they were both AMAZING.  The fried egg on my fried rice was just perfectly done and Aarti's noodle soup was a clear broth but still flavorful.  We also ate at a restaurant called Cafe Indochine (44 Sivatha Street) which is this cute kind of bungalow style restaurant.  It did have a lot of tourists, which is kind of a bad sign, but the food was decent.  I had the fish amok, which is a local dish. It's basically pieces of white fish in a coconut style curry like sauce.  We also had stir fried morning glory, which is really just a stemmy green and it was pretty tasty.  We also ate at Chamkar (The Passage, mid way along, Old Market) which is a vegetarian restaurant.  We had mushroom with beansprout,eggplant, and a mango salad.  The mango salad was by far my favorite.  It had the right level of citrus and sweetness from the mango.  The eggplant was a bit too smoky tasting for me and I liked the mushroom/beansprout dish although it was kind of hard to tell it was actually mushroom for some reason.  The restaurant was in the middle of a million other restaurants in the Old Market, so it might be hard to find and is probably a bit pricey (our total meal was $16) compared to other real local places.  The other place we ate at was this Khmer Family restaurant (?), it's right outside the outskirts of Angkor Wat and our driver (who I loved and would recommend to anyone!!) took us there twice.  It's a cute local restaurant with very basic food.  There's nothing amazing about the place and it's probably a bit more than it needs to be ($5-6 a dish), but I had a really healthy tasting noodle soup, which I would have again.

Krabi, Thailand

We ended our travels at the Sheraton in Krabi.  It's a bit far from everything, which is kind of nice because it's quiet and not chaotic.  While the hotel itself is beautiful, the food was the biggest disappointment there.  We used cash and points, so it didn't include breakfast which was a bit annoying.  We also had lunch there and it was pretty expensive ($15) and it wasn't that great.  There are two places within 2 minutes from the hotel that are pretty good.  One is to the right of the hotel when you're on the beach.  I don't know the name of the restaurant, but I thought the food was really good.  The seafood pad thai was $3 and very moist and flavorful and better than what I've had at home.  The other restaurant called The Terrace is right across the street.  I ordered the green curry fried rice, which was a big mistake! Not because the food is bad but because it was so spicy!!

This dish seriously almost took my face off.  It looks so unassuming, but it really packs a punch.  I literally had tears streaming down my face.  The food in general in Thailand is extremely spicy.  You have to say no spice and then even then it'll still be spicy.  We also at the Indian restaurant next door called Royal Clay Oven, and it was surprisingly very good.  We had a lentil dish and paneer dish which we demolished.  The only thing I didn't like was the naan, it was too dry and brittle.  I usually like my naan a bit moist so that I can sop up the rest of my food, this was too hard to really help collect the food. Another place we went to was in town (Ao Nang) at the seafood place.  I was really excited to eat some fresh seafood, but instead the dish I ordered was overcooked (granted I ordered the seafood hot plate and it was literally on fire before being served to me) and there wasn't enough variety in the type of seafood.  Maybe if I had ordered a whole fish or non hot plate it would have had more flavor instead of just a burnt taste.

All in all the food in SE Asia is amazing.  I would have liked to have been a bit more adventurous and had more local street food, but there's also a slightly danger in that.  The food is so cheap and good that it hurts to pay so much for food in the US that's half as good.  Even though the food scene may not always look sterile, the food always seemed "untainted" (locally grown and purchased daily from the markets), I don't recall ever seeing any canned or preserved food used.  There is so much more to Asia that I would love to see and I can't wait to go back again.

Spice Market Visited 11/2/10 3.75 Forks

Spice Market  403 W 13th St, (between 9th Ave & Washington St), New York, NY 10014

 Spice Market is one of those ultra trendy, New York scene type of restaurants.  Despite that, I was pretty excited to go for a client dinner this week, after all it is a Jean-George restaurant.  


My first impression is that the decor was gorgeous.  It's got a rustic Asian theme with beautiful wood work and giant paper lanterns.  The waitstaff was also dressed in "asian" wear, which for the women were these shirts that were completely held together by ties in the back. 

It says on the menu that the food should be ordered family style, so you would think that the portions would be slightly larger.  But as we started to order the waitress informed us that the appetizers were pretty small and that we should order 2 of everything.  I don't know if that was a sales ploy or not, but it worked.  We ordered double orders of the crab dumplings, lobster summer roll, chicken samosa, chicken skewers, and spring rolls.  Entree wise we had ordered the seafood laksa, halibut, red snapper, char grilled chicken, strip steak, short ribs, and grilled eggplant.  Clearly after a few ginger martinis, we were ordering like there was no tomorrow. I think we ordered so much food they brought us a complimentary shrimp and pineapple dish.  I'm not sure what the rub/sauce was on it, but it was a very thick brown spicy sauce, but the shrimp was cooked really well and I actually enjoyed the grilled pineapple.

When our appetizers started coming it was very clear that we went overboard with the ordering.  The problem with ordering a bunch of small plates with lots of people at the table is that you don't really get to appreciate or taste the food. I got one or two bites of each dish so it was hard to me to really decide if I liked or didn't like a dish (and the fact that I was on my 3rd drink).  I do know that I did like everything I ate.  Everything was seasoned well and it definitely had that "asian" twist. Most of the dishes came with very tasty sauces like spicy mayo for the rolls, cilantro yogurt for the samosa, and lime dipping sauce for the chicken skewers.  The chicken was cooked to a nice juicy level, none of it was dry which is key.  The crab dumplings were also done well but were a bit flat in texture.  I thought that the aromatic spice sauce was a bit too smokey and thick and the snow peas were overly cooked and not crunchy.  In all honesty, we could have and should have just ended dinner there.  I was so full, but then the entrees came out.  At this point, I could really barely remember the entrees.  There were just too many flavors running around my belly from all the appetizers.  I manage to try all of them except for the grill chicken.  At that point I just really thought I was going to explode.  I think the laksa was a bit thin, but all the fishes were cooked pretty well.  The steak was pretty well done but they warned us that was how they would do it in advance. 

Shockingly, some people were still up for dessert at the end.  Two people ordered the sorbert and it came out in these chinese take-out boxes filled the the brim with sorbet.  But they said that it was too hard and we had to practically hold it over the candle to defrost it.  

The reason I am not giving it 4 forks is that the prices there are pretty outrageous.  I mean they are pretty in line with typical trendy New York restaurants, but I just can never justify prices like these unless the meal truly blows my mind (a la Blue Hill at Stone Barns), which this place didn't.  The appetizers ranged in the $12-15 and the entrees were all over $20.  I don't think I would go here on my own, but I think it's a great place for client dinners or for out of town guests as it really is a beautiful restaurant.  I will say the waitstaff was super attentive.  One person at our table had a celery allergy and the waitstaff went in and asked the chef for the ingredients in all the dishes we ordered and made it very clear which dishes had celery or not. I have no idea how much the bill was, I'm just glad I wasn't the one paying!