Lukkaithong Royal Cooking at Suvarnabhumi Airport (Bangkok, THAILAND) ★★★☆☆

As usual, our final meal in Bangkok was a quick one at Mango Tree from the departure hall of Suvarnabhumi International Airport. At least that was the original plan going forward. I was in charge of leading the team to Mango Tree while Jelloman peeled off to take care of her VAT refunds. But my mission ended up failing miserably as I was unable to find the Mango Tree we used to visit in the past. 😖😖  This time, it was Lukkaithong Royal Cooking coming to the rescue.



The interior décor of Lukkaithong Royal Cooking did remind me a little of Audrey Café, which we had no time for on this trip.

Of course, one final sip of iced Thai milk tea before we took off. The Thai milk tea here actually came from Pang Cha and it came with an extra kick of sweetness and richness of tea flavors. This was by far the best Thai milk tea I had on this trip.

We just had enough time for this egg noodle dish, tossed with prawns and crispy kale. The gravy with umami-rich flavors (prawn heads and corals?) was a fairly nice touch.

This guy wounded up eating most of my noodles so I guess I would have to try my luck with the airplane food after all. 😓😓

Thank you, Bangkok for your hospitality! It's always nice to be back and as I said on many different occasions, the city will always have a special place in my heart (due to my many many visits in the past for business). Until next time!

Food Rating: 5.5/10

Price: ฿฿฿

Address: Suvarnabhumi Airport Gate F DFS Mall, 999/1Suvarnabhumi 3 Road, Nong Prue, Bang Phli, Samut Prakan, Thailand

Tel: +66 (0) 2134-7956

Website: www.lukkaithong.com

Opening Hours: 24 hours daily

Oh My Godmother EmSphere (Bangkok, THAILAND) ★★★☆☆

The final destination of our Bangkok trip will be EmSphere, a lifestyle, shopping and dining hub in Sukhumvit, just a few steps from EmQuartier. It was opened back in December 2023 just before the new year. We didn't have anything planned for dinner but figured we should check out a number of popular eateries in the mall including the red hot Oh My Godmother (OMGM).

When I said red hot, I meant OMGM has been one of the most popular cafés in Bangkok right now (with the exception of Le Café Louis Vuitton of course). The collaboration with Korean patissier Narae Kim who was the creator of the famous Godmother's Chiffon cake in Ho Chi Minh City, has proved to be a very successful one so far thanks to an exciting array of fusion dishes. Apart from their signature fusion pasta, OMGM also offers some of the cutest chiffon cakes with a variety of flavors including sweet corn and earl grey.

Seafood Doria (฿580) – The parsley rice pilaf was nicely topped with shrimp, calamari, clams and black mussels in a creamy sauce, finished off with cheddar and parmesan. Pretty decent.

Brown mushroom linguine AOP (฿320) – The al dente linguine was sautéed with champignon and brown shimeji mushrooms. 

Spaghetti mentaiko cream & shrimp (฿520) – Another pasta dish. This was a little soupier than I thought with the mentaiko cream flowing all over the spaghetti. There were a lot of ingredients in this one including shrimp, ikura, Japanese onion and nori strips; and the extra kick from the mentaiko cream meshed well with the pasta. (They always do).

I wish I had the room for their chiffon cakes but with Le Café Louis Vuitton coming up shortly (more on that later), it was time to settle the bills and venture back over to Gaysorn Village. 

Food Rating: 5.1/10

Price: ฿฿

Address: G/F The EmSphere, 524 Sukhumvit Road, Khlong Tan, Khlong Toei, Bangkok, Thailand

Closest BTS Station: Phrom Phong

Tel: +66 (0) 2125-6901

Website: https://www.instagram.com/omgm.bkk/?hl=en

Opening Hours: 10:00am - 10:00pm daily

Brassica Doughnuts EmSphere (Bangkok, THAILAND) ★★★☆☆

We have just one more place to visit before our highly anticipated late-afternoon tea at Le Café LV. EmSphere is one of the newest shopping, dining and entertainment hub in Bangkok and for someone who hasn’t visited the city for 6 years, it would be impossible not to include it in my agenda.

EmSphere is known for its wide variety of restaurants and cafés with more than a dozen of interesting F&B brands in the premise. And Brassica Doughnuts headlines the list (at least for me) after they made a name for themselves with this funky fried chicken doughnut sandwich.

Little nugget wanted to check out some doughnut shops here too but I told him "no Krispy Kreme please! Let's do it in Osaka.". 🍩😏

There will be no fried chicken doughnut sandwich for us this afternoon after we took a deep dive into Brassica's doughnut menu.
 

What they do offer is a series of tasty homemade doughnuts including their “Brûlée” and cheesecake collection (think burnt cheesecake, strawberry cheesecake etc.).
 

Since I had a similar type of Basque cheesecake doughnut at Donut Stand Arashiyama back in Kyoto a few months ago, I decided to try one of their crème brûlée doughnuts instead.

 
Kaya brûlée doughnut (฿120) – By brûlée doughnuts, they were obviously referring to adding a caramelized crust to the soft and pillowy fried dough. Almost like the caramel glaze on a crème brûlée.

 
After the slight torch on the doughnut, they diligently injected the kaya custard into the middle.

 
I thought this was quite decent. The generous portion of kaya custard was a pretty good start; and there was the nice contrasting temperature between the warm fried dough and cold custard cream. Not bad.

I don't think I will have any savory food tonight to be honest cuz I am already looking forward to the lovely pastries with the famous Louis Vuitton Monogram.  

Food Rating: 5.7/10

Price: ฿฿

Address: G/F The EmSphere, 524 Sukhumvit Road, Khlong Tan, Khlong Toei, Bangkok, Thailand

Closest BTS Station: Phrom Phong

Tel: +66 (0) 93 596-2465

Opening Hours: 10:00am - 9:00pm (Mon - Fri), 10:00am - 9:30pm (Sat - Sun)

ChaTraMue Mahanakhon Cube (Bangkok, THAILAND) ★★★☆☆

We had a wonderful time at King Power Mahanakhon SkyWalk this afternoon but it was time to hit our next destination. Just when we arrived at Chong Nonsi station, little nugget suddenly asked for time. As it turned out, he needed a break at the little man's room so all of us needed to backpaddle to Mahanakhon Cube. 

Jelloman has been asking for a small pack of Thai milk tea ice-cream from ChaTraMue since we touched down in Bangkok but I kept forgetting......but this must be her lucky day cuz there was a small ChaTraMue shop right next to the rest room. 😆😆

This time, I managed to remember!

This was pretty silky smooth and as expected, very milky with a mix of vanilla, caramel, and strong black tea flavors. Yes, it does feel like having frosty Thai milk tea!

Price: ฿฿

Address: 2/F Mahanakhon Cube, 96 Naradhiwas Rajanagarindra Road, Khwaeng Silom, Khet Bang Rak, Bangkok, Thailand

Closest BTS Station: Chong Nonsi

Website: www.cha-thai.com/en/content/25828/mahanakhon-cube-floor-2

Opening Hours: 10:00am - 10:30pm daily

IGNIV by Andreas Caminada at St Regis Hotel (Bangkok, THAILAND) ★★★☆☆

Our last official lunch of this trip took us to IGNIV, a Michelin starred restaurant located on the ground floor of St Regis Bangkok. It is the brainchild by Swiss-born chef Andreas Caminada, highly touted as one of the best chefs the country has ever produced. We had the pleasure of meeting him in person back in 2017 when we dined at his three-Michelin-starred restaurant Schloss Schauenstein and it remains one of the most memorable culinary experience for me ever.

IGNIV, literally meaning bird’s nest, operates quite differently from a typical fine-dining restaurant. Their menu offers a variety of modern European dishes served in innovative tapas-style portions with many of those meant to be shared among a small group.

We went with their “Lunch Break” menu, an omakase-style offering where the chefs curate a mix of canapés, starters, mains and desserts for us.  

Some small canapés to kick off the meal before we even placed our orders. The first to arrive was a lettuce cornet with lettuce ice-cream, grilled lettuce and capsicum purée in the middle. A mix of savory-sweet flavors for a nice refreshing start.

This was followed by three other canapés, first a white asparagus tart with miso and leeks featuring some really nice textures from the shaved asparagus. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of white asparagus from Golden Hill in northeastern part of Thailand.

Next up, a tartlet with diced Japanese mackerel wrapped by a small sheet of radish. The mackerel came with some subtle smokiness (charcoal?). 

Last but not least, and my favorite canapé from this group – a brioche topped with caviar, crème fraiche and dabs of chives purée. The brioche was actually a round-shaped madeleine; and not surprisingly, its pillowy texture was a strong match with the saltiness of the caviar, lovely acidity of the crème fraiche and earthy notes of the chives. 

Green and white asparagus, morel, truffle – The assortment of green and white asparagus came from Golden Hills of Thailand again. They formed a formidable partnership with the morel mushrooms and a truffle sauce which was spot on.

Salmon, roes, cucumber – The slightly torched salmon fillet and pickled cucumber were served on a pool of vegetal sauce with salmon roes. I was surprised (not pleasantly) by the sharp acidity of the cucumber and greenish sauce, which I thought could have been toned down a bit.

Scallop, orange – The refreshing scallop ceviche has been marinated with a sauce made with orange. Not bad. 

At this point, we were offered a collection of olive brioche and French baguette with yoghurt butter served on the side.

After a pretty impressive array of small bites, followed by a nice parade of starters tapas-style, here comes the main dishes, also in small portions.

Pork cheek, sunchoke, hazelnut – The succulent pork cheek simmered in a light pork consommé was paired with variations of sunchoke (I originally thought that was Jerusalem artichoke) and hazelnut. Some mildly sweet and bitter flavors on top of the savory pork, finished off by some nuttiness from the hazelnut. Pretty nice.

Cabbage, chilli, kale, kimchi – A cabbage roll with shredded purple cabbage, chilli and kale inside, topped nicely by some crunchy kimchi.

Gnocchi, mushroom(?) – Homemade cheese gnocchi served with a sauce made with what I thought was mushroom. This has been a problem throughout the meal as we had multiple servers coming up to explain the dishes for us but with their strong ascent, we had trouble getting a grasp of the ingredients from time to time (similar problem from Suhring last night as well, and they had so many different ingredients in a single dish).

Onto dessert now, this was obviously the weakest link…..

Fig, macadamia – Probably the most successful of the three desserts. The fig ice-cream,

macadamia purée and macadamia nuts were all fairly tasty (I love fig and macadamia) but they didn’t seem to integrate well together. 

Peach, passion fruit, tapioca – What’s there not to like about a tropical themed dessert, right? There was a bit of excessive acidity in the dish and the slices of local peach were just not nearly ripe enough.

70% chocolate mousse, cascara, rose – The fruity and herbal notes from cascara and floral notes from rose were both very nice but I didn’t think the chocolate mousse (also locally sourced?) lived up to expectation.

A very interesting meal with its ups and downs for sure. While I like the canapés, and some starters and main dishes (sorry, didn't like the three desserts), there were too many average ones towards the tail end of the feast. The cooking techniques were definitely there but the overall balance of the omakase menu seemed lacking, most notably with the absence of meat and seafood towards the end. Last time I checked (with the new restaurant manager), I was told that the dishes from "Lunch Break" primarily came from the a la carte menu (which would provide a balanced mix of meat, seafood and vegetarian dish) but unfortunately, this didn't turn out to be the case. In fact, none of the dish was.

Food Rating: 6.4/10

Price: ฿฿฿฿

Address: G/F St Regis Bangkok, 159 Rajadamri Road, Bangkok, Thailand

Closest BTS Station: Rajadamri

Tel: +66 (0) 2207-7822

Website: www.ignivbangkok.com

Opening Hours: 12:00pm - 3:00pm, 6:00pm - 11:00pm daily

Ben’s Cookies Siam Paragon (Bangkok, THAILAND) ★★★★☆

I am back at Siam Paragon to get my last minute shopping done this morning but first thing first, I will make Ben’s Cookies my first priority after missing out on their world famous cookies last night.

Little nugget is leading the charge to their shop on the ground floor near the food hall. He’s been their biggest fan since I introduced him to their white chocolate cookies in Kyoto last summer.

White chocolate macadamia – This is easily my favorite cookie around here. 

The nutty flavors really meshed well with the melty white chocolate and, the soft and slightly chewy texture of the cookie dough.

Milk chocolate – My second favorite right behind the white chocolate one with macadamia nuts. Without the nuts, I thought the sweetness could be a little too much for those without a sweet tooth.

Somehow my poor experience with Ben’s Cookies Tokyo didn’t carry over to Bangkok. I still remembered the batch of cookies we got from Ginza Six were so crunchy and hard, and I thought boy, did they just change their recipe? 

Food Rating: 6.3/10
Price: ฿฿฿
Address: Siam Paragon, Floor G, 991/1 Rama 1 Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok, Thailand
Closest BTS Station: Siam
Tel: +66 (0) 2610-7539
Website: www.benscookies.com

Opening Hours: 10:00am - 10:00pm daily

Sühring (Bangkok, THAILAND) ★★★★☆

For every family trip, I get one chance to enjoy a meal on my own; and I decide to spend it at Sühring tonight.

Located in a beautiful private mansion surrounded by greenery in a quiet residential area of Bangkok, Sühring is the brainchild of twins Mathias and Thomas Sühring who used to run the kitchen at Mezzaluna at LeBua Tower. Unfortunately, I arrived amidst heavy rain tonight and didn't get to see the garden myself, not even from the window (I was seated at the chef's table. More on that later).

Sühring has been a steady climber in the Asia Best 50 Restaurants and The World's Best 50 Restaurants awards in recent years. Settling in at No. 7 in Asia and No.23 in the world this year, the modern German restaurant is now one of the most sought-after dining destinations in Bangkok. Needless to say, I have been seriously looking forward to this culinary experience for months. 

A few of us at the counter table got things started with a crunchy pretzel packed with Camembert cheese. The canapé looked like it was finished off with a nice sprinkle of paprika powder.

The second nibble was pickled herring, mustard seeds, dill and a savory jelly served on a cucumber tart. I overheard my neighbours asking for an alternative snack after they heard the word "herring". Personally, I wasn't a fan myself but decided to swallow it all in one bite as instructed by my server. As expected, it came with a fair amount of acidity along with some nice crunch.

My favorite snack was the last one, a small green pea tart with garden peas, mushroom cream and elderflower. I love the clean flavors coming from the crunchy green peas working well with the woody mushroom cream; backed up nicely by some smokiness.

"Enleta" – A clever play on the famous Hanuta hazelnut and chocolate waffles. This version of the waffle from Sühring came with duck liver mousse instead of chocolate, and was matched up with a relatively sweet apricot jam. It was a really rich and fatty snack.

Vinegar from Pfalz – The foie gras waffle was paired with a small glass of drinking vinegar, also infused with apricot. This tasted a bit sweeter than I thought, with moderate acidity.

Scallop, blue swimmer crab, kombu, tarragon – Thin slices of raw Hokkaido scallop were placed next to pieces of crunchy kombu cut into small circular shape and they were stacked on top of a pear disk, with blue swimmer crab meat on top. A few things I love about this dish, starting with the lovely crunch of the kombu, following by the sweetness of the pear flesh both complementing the crab meat from Northern Thailand relatively well. Last but not least, the small dabs of tarragon with its herbal notes added another dimension to the dish.

Tafelspitzsülze – Slow-cooked beef was made into a jelly with fruits and vegetables, very similar to a terrine, and it was paired with fresh herbs and edible flowers. A really refreshing dish that was perhaps missing an accompanying sauce. 

Some homemade country bread was presented along with German bread rolls and brioche. 

Arctic char, cauliflower, almond – Butter poached Arctic char was served on a bed of cauliflower purée and almond cream. At first glance, I thought it was a fried egg underneath the fish. 😆😅

While the butter poached Arctic char wasn't bad, the second serving of the dish was even more delicious. This came in the form of a bite-sized tartlet made with almond paste and inside the tartlet, there were sumptuous char roes, caviar and what I thought was char tartare.

Langoustine, summer squash, dill – Superbly cooked Norwegian langoustine, finished on wood fire, was met with a pretty powerful langoustine bisque and dill oil. Served on the side was zucchini done two ways, with a zucchini stick garnished with dabs of summer squash juice and a zucchini dome stuffed with langoustine tartare. 

I thought everything here was perfect except for the very intense sauce made with langoustine (which was good but not great).

At this point, Mathias (or was it Thomas) stepped into the limelight of the kitchen.

I was shown the duck which has been smoked with hay a little earlier.

Duck, peach, Grue de cacao, vanilla – Here, the duck has been aged for 10 days before cooking with hay. Now, it's ready to be served.

The duck breast was very nicely cooked with remarkable texture while the skin was brushed with some Grue de cacao and caramelized. The dish was finished off with duck jus reduction and a hint of vanilla. 

Seabuckthorn – After all our savory dishes, a palate cleanser of pink pepper sorbet was next.

Omas Käsekuchen – Or Grandma's cheesecake. A collection of white cream cheese and white chocolate, completed with a nice pour of strawberry and vanilla liquid nitrogen ice-cream and meringue.

A fresh strawberry on a stick with a touch of shiso.

They swear this was the last sweet treat of the night. The eggnog came from a secret recipe from the twins' grandma. The staff even brought out the old handwritten recipe which I got the chance to picture right behind my eggnog. This was really really strong and I just couldn't finish the whole thing.  

Right around the time I was about to finish things up and call it the night, both twins appeared in the kitchen just in the nick of time for me to take a photo of.

A fine selection of chocolate pralines put an end on a fantastic night filled with delicious food and a great vibe.

The 2-hour meal finished a little earlier than I thought, which I considered great work of pacing. So, was this one of the best meals I have ever had in Bangkok or better yet in the world? Disappointingly no. Without a question, everything was nicely cooked tonight but unlike some of the raving reviews that put the restaurant in the conversation of perhaps the best German restaurant in the world or three Michelin starred worthy, something seemed to be missing from start to finish. When I tried to think of the right word or phrase, I finally found one. It's the "wow" factor that was sorely missing throughout the meal; and for a restaurant with such pedigree (and price tag), it had to be disappointing. 

(I think having a great pastry chef would be a nice start. Cream cheese with liquid nitrogen ice-cream isn't anything new anymore).

Food Rating: 7.5/10

Price: ฿฿฿฿

Address: 10 Soi Yen Akat 3, Chong Nonsi, Yan Nawa, Bangkok, Thailand

Tel: +66 (0) 2107-2777

Website: www.restaurantsuhring.com

Opening Hours: 12:00pm - 1:30pm (Thu - Sun), 5:30pm - 8:30pm (Wed - Sun)

S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants: 23rd (2024)

S. Pellegrino Asia's 50 Best Restaurants: 7th (2024)