New restaurants in Hong Kong: Nahm chef David Thompson’s Aaharn – tasty yet mild Thai
- Australian chef behind celebrated Bangkok restaurant seems to have dialled down the heat at his first Hong Kong outlet
- The dishes at the Tai Kwun restaurant were full of flavour, although one was overseasoned
I’m not sure if David Thompson, the Australian chef who until recently had the Michelin-starred Nahm, in Bangkok, created a menu of Thai dishes for Aaharn that were not spicy, thinking that Hong Kong diners couldn’t take the heat, or if we just happened to choose four dishes that were very mild (two had no hint of chilli at all). There’s no indication on the menu which dishes are spicy and which are not.
Aaharn, which opened in October in the Tai Kwun complex in Central, is Thompson’s first foray into the Hong Kong market, and the restaurant was hotly anticipated.
The waitress suggested that my guest and I choose one dish from each section of the short menu. That would have been six savoury dishes – which would have been far too much for two (and it also would have been an even more expensive meal); in the end, we had four dishes plus dessert, which was plenty.
We loved the amuse bouche of ma hor – an intense, sweet-savoury mixture of chunks of pineapple and tangerine segments. The waitress said the mixture was made up of pork, prawns and peanuts, but it was so much more than that; we could taste lots of shallots, palm sugar and fish sauce.
