MANY Bangkok restaurateurs have got the idea into their heads that bigger means better. It all started a few years ago with a crop of restaurants seating many hundreds. They became very successful and fostered greater ambitions. Seating for hundreds gave way to seating for thousands.
The inflation in restaurant size seemed to have reached its apex with the establishment of the Tamnak Thai Restaurant, famous for its trademark roller skating waiters and waitresses. For a couple of years it held the record for the world's largest restaurant, accommodating some 3,000 diners at a single sitting.
However, the owners of Tamnak Thai soon got itchy feet and decided to trump themselves with a 5,000-seater restaurant, called Mang Gorn Luang, or the Royal Dragon.
Occupying a 32,000 square metre site, the restaurant quickly secured its place in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest restaurant.
The Royal Dragon is truly a festival of excess. Subtlety is not the order of the day. The colours are bright, the mandarin style uniforms of the serving staff are gaudy in the extreme and the entertainment is hardly suitable for candle-lit dinners to theaccompaniment of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
Here entertainment is modelled on the style perfected in Las Vegas, where spotlights blaze at full intensity and amplifiers are turned to maximum volume.