I had some really busy days in Bangkok, but luckily I still managed to make time for the city’s amazing food. In Bangkok, you rarely have to look further than the nearest street corner to find a food stall serving delicious noodles, salads, and skewers for 20-50THB. When that’s the standard, it can be hard to justify paying 50 times more at an upscale restaurant. In other words, it really has to be worth it before I swap my sidewalk plastic chair for a neatly set table, air conditioning, and a proper wine menu.
One of the places where I happily pay a little extra is EAT ME, which in my opinion is one of the best restaurants in Bangkok. Here, excellent food goes hand in hand with a great atmosphere and some of the most terrific restaurant staff in the city.
It had been a while since my last visit, but thankfully not much had changed. The restaurant was still full of happy guests, and that guy, who I suspect might be the owner, was still walking around greeting everyone, just like the last time I was there. I even recognized several items on the menu and was very close to ordering that really tasty crispy duck confit with prosciutto again. Instead, I decided to try something new and went for two starters and a dessert.
The first dish was a cold avocado soup with crab, and it was one of the best things I’ve eaten in a long time. It’s rare to find good crabmeat in restaurants in Denmark, so when that small pile of crab appeared on my plate in perfect harmony with the creamy avocado, I was on a one way ticket to food nirvana. The second dish was gravlax made with Tasmanian salmon. The salt and sugar balance was spot on, and the mustard sauce actually tasted like the one we usually serve with gravlax in Scandinavia.
For dessert, I had a salad with fresh coconut, raspberries, pomegranate syrup, and mint. It was so delicious, and almost healthy, that I immediately regretted not ordering two.
When people write about fine dining in Bangkok, they often focus on hotel restaurants. That might be justified to some extent, since many of the city’s best restaurants are located inside hotels. But good food is about more than the right balance of carbohydrates, protein, and starch, and good restaurant karma is about more than quiet jazz and expensive dark designer furniture.
What sets EAT ME apart from most of Bangkok’s other fine dining options is that this place has soul. It’s not a hotel restaurant, and it’s not part of an international chain. It’s a wonderful spot serving excellent food, and it even has an in house gallery where local and international artists show their work.
There’s also a bar where you can enjoy cocktails before or after dinner.
Read my blog post about another great dinner I had at EAT ME >>
EAT ME, 20 m off Convent Rd. (in Soi Pipat 2), Silom, Bangkok, Tel: 02-238-0931, Nearest BTS: Sala Daeng
