COCONUTS CRITIC’S TABLE – Last month I pulled out my quill and tenderly appended another name to my list of Bangkok Restaurants I Will Never Patronize Again – though for different reasons from the usual. The place was Taling Pling on Pan Road. I’d once had an excellent meal there – a juicy seabass steak in chu chi sauce still swims into my daydreams now and again – and hoped to repeat the trick. Alas, when we reached the location, my friend and I were greeted with a sight suggesting dinner was going to disappoint: The entire block that housed the restaurant had been reduced to a murky field of mud and rubble. It’s one thing to find a restaurant closed – another entirely to find it completely and irreversibly obliterated. So it goes.
There is, of course, more Taling Pling where that came from, with a bunch of mall branches in Central World, Paragon and a couple of other monstrous carbuncles around the city. But my suspicion – based on a couple of disappointments and reports from informants – is that the chain’s best kitchen team was reserved for the flagship. Where, I wondered, might those esteemed pleasure bringers have gone? There appears to be an answer. And it happens to feature one of the best-looking dining rooms in all Bangkok. Super.
The new Taling Pling on Sukhumvit 34 is like a grander, more stylish reworking of the old restaurant. The bright pinks, greens and oranges that are the chain’s visual trademark remain. But the ceiling has soared upwards, while a glass façade adds to the feeling of space. Providing a note of visual drama is an Alice in Wonderland-esque chessboard floor that runs diagonally to the orientation of the building. The chairs are mostly dark, square and with faux-rattan plastic backs, though some, perhaps one in three, are of a voluptuous Chinese design and painted brightly. Perhaps this curious mix alludes to Thai-Chinese heritage; of the owners, perhaps, or the city itself. There’s also a much less impressive back room – so booking is advised.
Let’s be clear: This is a family restaurant. You won’t see the trendy young things that flock to newly opened Sukhumvit eateries, but you will see grandmas (and, as we all know, grandmas know their shit). You won’t hear an impossibly hip soundtrack, because there is no soundtrack – apart from chatter and cutlery striking crockery. And don’t expect fancy Belgian beers or complicated cocktails with witty names – because there isn’t even a drinks menu. There is Heineken, there is Singha and there are a few bottles of liquor on a shelf at the back. Make the best of it or play nice and have a mocktail. I vouch for the Ginger Garden, a refreshing concoction with aloe, mint and a nice ginger bite on the finish.
Service is the kind of perfunctory stuff you expect in a high-turnover Thai restaurant. Do not ask if the chicken is local. The menu, as you would also expect in such a place, is hefty but just about manageable. The standard every-joint-in town stuff is present and correct but there are rarer recipes too, many from the fiery South. Take curries: the conventional option might be beef green curry with roti; those of a more adventurous bent might order yellow curry with fish belly and okra. Or in the fried stakes, there’s sator – the stinky green bean of the South – with shrimp, pork and chili for the daring and phad Thai for the dreary (I jest. But please, tourists: try exploring dishes with a less fascist backstory now and again).
We opted for miang kham taling pling, wraps made from the betel-like cha plu leaf that you fill yourself – fun! – with garlic, chillies, peanuts, a sweet mash of peanut and shrimp, and taling pling – the tart Thai fruit that lends the restaurant its name. It’s a dish at once primitive and sophisticated, showing off Thai cuisine’s five essential flavors (sweet, salty, sour, bitter and spicy; a production of Snow White gone terribly wrong).
Deep-fried soft-shell crab kee mao-style was not quite the potent offering you expect with “drunkard” dishes – heavy with garlic, peppercorns and chilis – but it was still excellent, the sweet, crispy crab getting an aromatic twist with crispy basil leaves. It came with the standard bowl of bottled chili sauce, in case you thought things were getting fancy. The roasted pork neck and fried egg salad was equally good, the fire of the spicy dressing extinguished by the egg. The mackerel in coconut milk and lotus stem sauce was a fine, creamy umami-heavy dish, though the bones in the fish made eating it feel a little too much like a sort of food–based Russian Roulette. A better version can be found at The Local.
In a pleasingly non–dogmatic way, a good selection of Thai desserts are joined by an equal number of Western ones – the likes of Devil’s food cake and berry crumble. We took a custard apple ice cream – an insincere “let’s have a Thai dessert” gesture on our part – and a chocolate “concord” with chocolate meringue. The latter resembled a breakfast cereal, perhaps even dog biscuits, glued together into a stump and served on a humble glass saucer. This was not a sexy sight, but it turned out to hide in its belly a fabulously sweet chocolate ganache that seduced us into leaving the ice cream melting while the dish was demolished.
Taling Pling is not in the city’s top rung of Thai restaurants, but it isn’t trying to be. The food is delicious, unpretentious and good value. The main room holds its own aesthetically against almost any Bangkokian restaurant you could mention. I’ll never go to that nice place on Pan Road again – but who cares.
Taling Pling
25 Sukhumvit Soi 34
02-258-5308-9
–
Coconut’s Critic’s Table reviews are written based on unannounced visits by our writers and paid for by Coconuts Bangkok. No freebies here.
Follow Dan Waites on Twitter: @DanWaites
