Where to go for Bangkok's best and trendiest restaurants
Bangkok has long had some of the best street food in the world, now its fine dining scene is catching up
Until recently, Bangkok's dining scene has largely consisted of cheap eats and street food or ornate modernist takes on Thai cuisine. These days, however, Thailand's capital is starting to fill out with hip, casual, but sophisticated mid-range dining options that are the envy of other culinary capitals in the region.
For an idea of how far the city's food scene has come, take its performance in this year's Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list — five restaurants from Bangkok made the cut. Among them are Issaya Siamese Club, mentioned below, and modernist, molecular Indian restaurant Gaggan, which claimed the number one spot (good luck getting a table there). These are worth checking out.
One of the many surprises in Bangkok's contemporary dining scene is that one of the best Thai restaurants is run by an American. Soul Food Mahanakorn in the trendy Thong Lor area, with its flickering lighting and floor to ceiling wood panelling has the feel of a traditional Thai house. The downstairs bar serves excellent basic cocktails but it is upstairs in the dining room where the real magic happens. Soul Food is just that, soulful; and it specialises in the kind of rich, deeply flavoured home-style Thai cooking that can send the uninitiated into a speechless rapture. Everything we tried on the menu, which lists dishes from all over Thailand, was excellent. But the hands-down must-try dish is the ecstasy-inducing gaeng hang lay: a Shan Burmese curry of pork belly, soured with tamarind and braised in ginger and garlic. For anyone accustomed to the sweeter, one-note curries from Thai restaurants overseas, this dish will be a revelation. Order more than you think is wise, trust us.
