What to eat if you have only that many meals in Bangkok

So.. Many people are traveling to Bangkok for cafe hops and here I am, trying out some of the hot favourites.

1. Roast Cafe and Eatery 

They recently expanded to the new mall in Emquartier from their original flagship outlet at Thong Lor. Didn't manage to try it the last time round but I made a mark to hit the cafe when we visit Emquartier. 

I heard they are famous for their Big Breakfast but since we were there after our hotel's breakfast, we decided to try something else. 

Looking for the best fried chicken? Try Roast. It was so well presented and the portion was surprisingly big. One whole chicken and served with a bowl of fresh purple cabbage coleslaw and a bottle of uniquely Roast chilli sauce for dipping. The chicken are well deep fried to perfection. The skin is lightly crispy and the meat is so very tender and moist with a toss of garlic and rosemary for the flavour. Highly recommended for the carnivores. 


They also sell several sides on the ala carte of which will be my favourite- FRIES! It's thick cut and deep fried with the skin so it's really wicked good! We ordered the Truffle Alfredo because the name includes two of my top weakness - truffle and mushrooms! It was delicious but a little overdose of the cream base. You can taste the concoction of truffle, mushroom and bacon in every mouthful of the pasta. 
 
Drinks were strawberry mojito and roast iced tea. The former was pleasant and not too sweet with chunks of cut strawberries while the latter tasted like lychee iced tea so it was a refreshing drink to go with the heavy bites we had. 

Expect to queue if you're there at meal times because the seating area is also quite limited.

2. Hello Kitty Cafe

Yes!!! I went to the Hello Kitty Cafe at Siam Square 1! It feels like I'm in Hello Kitty's palace because it feels so homely and cute!!!! 

Everything is so picture worthy and I think we spent more time snapping away than actually enjoying the cafe's food and drinks. Well.. To be honest, most themed cafes don't emphasize on quality food but it's different here. We were pretty amazed by the Rainbow Cheese Cake and the Shirley Temple drink. The drink was a refreshing twist to the usual Thai milk tea we have in Bangkok whilst the cheesecake is dense and just about right on the sweetness with a crumbly biscuit base. 


3. Greyhound 

This is such a well-mentioned cafe and its presence in several big malls in Bangkok also speaks for itself. However, the food we tried were not too impressive which gave me second thoughts on how it could even end up as one of the top cafes to visit.

Spring roll below was specially requested by mama so we decided to try. It tastes and look somewhat like the Vietnamese version. It was rather rather bland for our liking despite the sliced ginger in vinegar as the dip. I wouldn't recommend this unless you have a palate for refreshing dish. I'd strongly suggest to get Thai salads instead.


Apparently this complicated noodle has a big part to play in the popularity game for the cafe industry. However, it seems like just another popiah dish to me except that it's DIY. You are supposed to wrap the minced meat with some lettuce and parsley together with some garnish using the thinly cut rice roll. I actually like the innovation of this dish which is quite unheard of. 


Greyhound fried chicken is another of their famous starter. It is slightly different from Roast's whereby this consist of winglets which are deep fried with special marinate that makes it really delicious and lips smacking. 


The pomelo salad had bits of floss, silver fish and peanuts to go with it. A little disappointing as it felt like there was no other flavoring in the making of this dish. Another refreshing starter if you are sick of heavy tasting food. 


Overall, I found Greyhound's food a little disapponting and below my expectations. Maybe the mains would be way better but we did not try any of them. I also had the sea salt caramel chocolate cake which was a good enough compensation for the rest of the dishes. The layers of dense chocolate cake and caramel was accompanied by a dollop of cream and sea salt paste, ensuring a salty touch to every mouth of sweetness. What else can I say? 

4. CoffeeBean by Dao

Initially, I would have thought this was just a cafe opened in Bangkok by the owners of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. But I was so wrong! See the cakes below yourself and you will be so in love with this cafe! 
Splendidly displayed cakes filled the two shelves and it was indeed some variety there. We could not decide what to get and ended up sitting down to order some savouries first since most people there were also having mains. 


We ordered one drink each as we were really thirsty! The red sorrel drink and Chinese date juice were highly recommended by the waiters. Both were very refreshing especially for the weather in Bangkok. Tinge of sourness from the date and sorrel in the sweetened drinks makes a good combination. The other was iced coffee for mama 😊 


The picture of the following dish in the menu tempted us to get this. This lobster creamed squid ink pasta did not disappoint us at all! The spaghetti was cooked with just the right texture whilst infused with chunks of lobster flesh in creamy base. This was more than perfect and my first go at squid ink pasta was surely a pleasant surprise! 


This creamed spinach with hard boiled egg and chicken pita bread is ridiculously good too! I was not convinced to try but mama wanted to eat so we ordered anyway. Man... I never knew creamed spinach would go so well with soft bread! By the way, the crispy fries makes a great couple 😋 


BBQ prawns mixed with vinegar in your salad? Here you go.. A dream dish for the lightweights. Or rather, light stomach.
I would totally have this again. The prawns were so fresh and crunchy!   


5. Ping's Restaurant 

Would you plan a meal in a Singaporean owned restaurant when you're overseas? Maybe not... But you won't ever find this in Singapore, no matter how hard you try.

Ping's specializes in Sharks Fin dishes. But we ordered some of the other side dishes too! One of it is the oyster pancake below.. It's our oyster omelette but so much crispier and thinner. There's a good proportion of egg and flour mixture that was slightly starchy to give it some Taiwanese-like taste. It was placed on layers of beansprouts and then a hot pan to keep the dish warm. To be honest, I like this better than Singapore's. 


This goose webs mee pok in claypot caught our eye and we couldn't not order it. The goose webs was cooked till soft and taste of the mee pok was just nice. Every bite has a right balance aroma and savor. 


And last but not least... How can we forget the main character of Ping's?? Look at my spoonful of sharks fun. YES doesn't it look like vermicelli? I'm not a huge fan of delicacies like this but it's not everyday you get to eat this so just.. tuck in! I ate till the very last drop of soup and fin. I could feel the passion and love for cooking as I savour every bite of the sharks fin. There's different sizes and different types of fin too. Of course you pay more for the bigger fins. We ordered the medium fin and had a bowl each. 

We were so lucky to be there during the jubilee weekend and the owner actually had a promotion! SG50 discount of 20% of entire bill. What a great deal right! 


6. Sab Sab Wanton Noodles 
If you are visiting Bangkok for the first time, you'd probably be looking up blogs and reviews on what to eat. And surely, you'd come across Sab x2 wanton noodles. For me, I always thought it's a tourist trap until I saw the crowd for myself. Although they are largely (I can safely say about 80%) foreigners, i wanted to give it a shot so that I can better share my reviews about this eatery. 


So yes that's the queue, easily 20-30 people ahead of us and we are all queuing in a lane along a narrow alley of pratunam. Not a difficult task to identify this place given the long queue of people.

We finally got a table after about 45 minutes. The service was pretty fast I must say and if you see the portion, it doesn't take that long to cook a bowl :/ 

Wow I could eat 5 bowls if I wanted but since we were there for a tasting session. We reckon a bowl each is sufficient. The pork trotters meat looks tempting and since it's one of my favorites, of course we had to order it. 

My opinion about the noodles? I would say it's better than Thong Lor's Sukhumvit Soi 38. Believe my previous post illustrates my experience there already so I shall not elaborate too much. If you're curious, feel free to visit my blog post titled 'Your One Stop Guide to Bangkok Eats, Shop, Massage and Stay' the noodles are tastier and tangier than the others I've tried in Bangkok and the trotters are pretty good too. Although a bit pricey, it's still worth a try. The char siew are at least visible unlike some places where I almost cannot feel them in my mouth when I bite it. 


7. Chocolate Ville! 
I've heard quite a bit about it from my friends and on blogs so we decided to go this time round since we were in Bangkok for quite a couple of days. It is about 50 mins cab ride from our hotel in Chit Lom. We almost couldn't get a cab because taxi drivers are worried they can't pick up customers from there and it's way too far. Some don't even know where this place was. 

We finally decided to take up the offer of 400 baht to go there and the driver waited for us to send us back which cost another 400 baht. At least we saved the trouble of cab hunting after the dinner. 


There's quite a bit of scenery and nice buildings and architecture to take pictures with at Chocolate Ville. Lots of tour buses come here and we found ourselves surrounded by Chinese tourists. 

 
See the ducklings in the waters! 


We actually booked a table on their Facebook in advance but we missed it as we were late from all the cab waiting back at our hotel. Luckily we still managed to get a pretty alright table. 

Not to worry as I think there's plenty of tables there but if you would like a better view. Reservation is available on their Facebook page, just message them!

We were supposed to have a good dinner but the food is overall pretty average. I guess people come here more for the view than the food. The salted egg papaya salad is unique but the long beans were too tough to bite. 

8. Nara Thai Cuisine
Finally... The star of Thai restaurants! Nara Thai is located at several locations but we went to the one at Centralworld as its nearer to our hotel and we had it before departing.  


The tom yum soup is supposed to be one of their popular dishes. It was quite spicy and sour so I love it. And being in a hotpot keeps the soup warm. It's loaded with seafood which includes fresh prawns and squids.


The green chicken curry was very delicious too! It goes so well with rice plus they were so generous with the chicken and green brinjals. The curry was not too watery but very tasty at the same time. 

We ordered this garlic promfret. Since we are all fans of fish, we couldn't not have this. The fish meat was cut into chunks and deep fried before serving on the original fish itself so for those who likes to dig the flesh from other more bony parts, feel free to do so. Diced garlic was fried till fragrant and tossed all over to complete the dish. 


Nara Thai offers good food at affordable prices so I will highly recommend if you'd like to have some authentic Thai dishes. 

A great finale meal here at Bangkok. I'd sure be back next year! Till then... 


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