Haoma, one of Bangkok’s first restaurants to grow many of their ingredients on-site at their hydroponic urban farm, has gotten much hype over the last few months due to their sustainable dining ideals. The Phrom Pong restaurant also claims to be Bangkok’s first zero-waste dining option (more on that later).
Every visitor gets a tour of the facilities, showing where 37 kinds of greens are grown and where 800 fish are being raised in a series of outdoor barrels.
Here’s their executive chef and owner, Deepanker “DK” Khosla, showing us around.
Haoma (pronounced how-mah) has partnered with Thai Harvest SOS, a food charity that “rescues” and recycles unused food from hotels and restaurants around the city and brings it to the needy. Haoma plays a different role in the cycle — they take the stuff that everyone else discards, like potato peels, fruits skins and veggie ends, and use them to make miraculous recycled cuisine.
Whatever the restaurant can’t grow itself or recycle from the city, it sources from within Thailand, including their wagyu beef. They only get three ingredients from outside the country: olive oil, chocolate, and parmesan cheese. They are also a plastic-free business, insisting that any veggies coming in from other growers be delivered to them in reusable cotton bags.
When we visited, DK explained how their signature sauce — dark colored, deeply savory, and one that you’d swear was beef-based — is actually made out of potato peels. He was also whipping up a batch of tepache, a homemade alcohol originating from Mexico that’s made out of pineapple skins.
During our garden tour, the staff told us about the greens growing — among them, German dill, Indian borage, wasabi mizuna, and Mexican coriander — and how the restaurant plans to go carbon negative (that is, taking more carbon out of the atmosphere than you add to it) by next year.
We also had a chance to sample their new monsoon menu, themed after the three months of rain that Bangkok is about to enjoy. While city-dwellers tend to think of the rains as dirty and inconvenient, DK spoke passionately about the bounty provided by the wet season, making us rethink — and maybe even appreciate — those showers that always seem to come down heaviest just as we’re stepping out to dinner.
Haoma has done away with an a la carte menu, and for the moment, is only offering two tasting menus: a 5-course set for THB1,590, and a 7-course set for THB1,990.
We tried the 7-course menu, which includes five desserts (three of which are combined to make one course). We won’t give all the details away — part of the fun of dining here is not quite knowing what to expect. So, instead, here’s a sample of what’s on offer at Haoma over the next few months:
The starter, with scallop, ice apple, avocado, green mango, tiger milk, quinoa, and pickled chili, was a delight. It came served in a shallow bowl over ice.
DK asked us to guess which of the flat clear disks lining the plate where which, since clear disks of ice apple (also sometimes called palmyra) and scallop look pretty similar. This dish can also be made with pieces of young coconut to the same effect, for vegetarians. The toasted quinoa pieces and pickled chili gave this dish texture and punch, while the avocado provided creaminess.
The next dish was among the most playful. As plates with what looked like small Magnum ice cream bars appeared on our tables, DK came by and told us that Magnums are his favorite treat and he eats one every day. Since he wanted to share that love with his guests, he crafted a course of a tiny, homemade “Magnum” filled with chicken liver and covered with savory (not sweet) chocolate flecked with nuts. It came on a stick, just like a real Magnum. Also on the plate was a bit of pumpkin and a citrus sauce to set off the creaminess of the liver.
Within the first round of mains, diners can choose grouper raised on the premises, with fried Thai purple sweet potato in a spicy sauce made with capers and the wasabi mizuna we saw growing outside.
Pasta dishes in non-Italian fine-dining restaurants can sometimes seem like an afterthought, like they were just added on to cater to vegetarians. Not so at Haoma. This dish is a single sheet of al dente pasta over heaps of a deeply-flavorful parmesan mousse, which hid a bevy of baby fresh root vegetables in their fresh-from-the-ground, perfectly imperfect shapes and sizes. There were also hazelnuts in there. This was another of the night’s highlights.
Next up, for the meat-eating crowd: a disk of duck and chicken held together with natural gum and topped with the restaurant’s signature potato peel sauce. On the side was a wedge of braised cabbage and burnt leek and potato puree.
In veggies, we also had an Indian-inspired dish — a small head of baked spicy cauliflower served with curry foam, crispy job’s tears, and homemade greek yogurt. This is the only time I can recall enjoying job’s tears, which I find usually have a weird flavor.
We finished off with five lovely dessert courses, but only one truly stood out: A large white, cornflake-flecked meringue.
DK explained that it’s supposed to remind diners of eating those sweet breakfast cereals from childhood. Here, the cornflakes are soaked in milk overnight and then blended and dried into a powder to make the meringue, which opens with a satisfying crack.
It tastes exactly like Lucky Charms cereal left sitting in a bowl of room temperature milk for a bit too long, has gone all soggy, and is absolutely perfect. This concoction is served with a pool of passion fruit sauce, setting off the cloying sweetness with a bit of tartness.
FIND IT:
Haoma
231/3 Sukhumvit Soi 31
Daily (except Mondays), 6pm-11pm
BTS Phrom Pong
All photos: Laurel Tuohy for Coconuts Media
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