COCONUTS CRITIC’S TABLE — There’s a disheartening feeling that sometimes hits a food obsessive. I’m going to refer to it as The Doubt. The Doubt creeps up on you unexpectedly – not with a bang, but a whimper. It finds you in above-par restaurants, not also-ran places that never stood a chance. It happens like this: You order a few dishes from the menu. The meal arrives, and it’s all fine: well-cooked, well-seasoned, well-everything. It’s the Jennifer Aniston of meals. And yet it makes you feel absolutely nothing. No spark of joy, no flutter of excitement, no stirring of the soul, nothing.
But rather than put it all down to simple mediocrity, that lack of excitement leads you to suspect that it isn’t actually the food that’s at fault at all – it’s you. You’re a glutton. You’re jaded. You’ve spent too much time and treasure chasing the dragon of Good Eatin’, and now you’re simply incapable of experiencing joy at the dinner table. “It’s not you, it’s me,” you want to tell the chef, by way of apology for your lack of enthusiasm. Maybe, you wonder, you’re just not that into food anymore, as you morosely insert another chunk of pork belly into your over-ample gob. This, my friend, is The Doubt. Then you go somewhere like Le Du and, course by course, The Doubt evaporates. And you remember – that food can still be exciting. That, in the right hands, it remains the sincerest of all pleasures.
The restaurant, next to Namsaah Bottling Trust on quiet Soi Silom 7, is in the hands of two annoyingly young Thai chefs: Thitid “Ton” Tassanakhajorn and Worathon “Tae” Udomchalotorn, both of whom graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and variously worked in Michelin-starred kitchens in New York and California. The former also happens to be a certified sommelier and has cast a smart sensibility over the wine list. Another partner, Khun Tao, is also manager, leading to a refreshing lucidity in the service on the floor.
The restaurant itself is an unremarkable space. There’s an almost nautical feel to the place, with white paint and curves and fat circular columns. The lighting is rather dim and the ceilings are low, lending an atmosphere that will inevitably be described as “intimate.” Still, you’re given enough space between tables to get a feeling of privacy – something no doubt appreciated by Bill Heinecke, who was there when we were. That he had elected to dine at this restaurant and not The Pizza Company struck us as somewhat disloyal to his own brand, but I’m sure he had his reasons. (Lead from the front, Bill.)
The menu changes seasonally – appropriate, given the restaurant’s name, a Frenchified rendering of redu, the Thai word for “season.” We went for the seven-course tasting menu at THB1,590++, though you can order a la carte or take a four-course option at THB990++, which allows you to choose anything you want, though there are supplements for the more substantial dishes.
The meal started with a simple amuse of greek yoghurt and sweet ice infused with the oregano-like flavor of Indian mint. What followed was a sequence of wonderful dishes that were unlike anything I’ve eaten before. Many of the dishes sounded strange – even unappealing – to our non-Thai sensibilities. But the fears, time after time, proved unfounded. The first course sounded like a list of things you might find in a trash can outside a country restaurant: “Ant larvae, dried local tuna, herbs caramel, cream of toasted coconut, leaves.” At once sweet, salty, bitter and sour, the dish turned out to be in essence a deconstructed miang kham, which are in ordinary circumstances little betel-leaf parcels that you assemble yourself. Here, the addition of the ant larvae gave the dish textural body and the nectar-like sauce brought it all together. Delicious and intriguing stuff.
Sweetness – as is normal with Thai food – abounds across the menu, so that some of the mains could almost as easily end up on the dessert menu. Many of the dishes are novel rethinkings of established Thai fare. A dish of compressed watermelon covered in a smoked fish crumble was a variation on an old Thai snack, though here the compressed fruit burst with flavor and sweetness, the crumble bringing sparkles of salt and umami. But it was the pairing with shallot ice cream that turned the dish into something wondrous. The strangest dish to our palates was a salad of three kinds of Thai mushrooms with bitter gourd, Chinese cabbage florets and shards of crisp chicken skin. A deeply flavored reduction of Thai herbs with Thai anchovies was almost overwhelmingly strong, but not quite, and we decided it was a challenge we were glad we had been put through.
At other times the quality of the produce shone through. The chicken course was perfectly tender and burst with flavor augmented by turmeric, apple and hummus. Meaty cuttlefish was elegantly presented as two intertwined strips of octopus with creamy clumps of its eggs and salty cubes of chorizo and crab mayo.
Desserts were not the highlight of the meal, but they managed the difficult trick of combining a Thai essence with the hearty satisfaction of a European sweet. A glass of quivering Thai tea pudding was helped along by gooey chunks of chocolate brownie. A pork blood pudding – again, not as scary as it sounds – was served with almond sable, tapioca pearls, caramel and milk sorbet: a delicious melange of Thai confectionary.
I suspect that what we’re seeing at Le Du is something New, with a capital “N.” A New Thai cuisine, in the mold of La Nouvelle Cuisine and La Nueva Comida. Restaurants like Nahm and Bo.lan are doing something important: resurrecting old Thai dishes from the archives, preserving all that is great about Thai cooking and using the highest-quality ingredients while doing so. This is the Lord’s work. But while the approach itself may be innovative and thoroughly satisfying, in a certain sense it doesn’t constitute innovation. This is Paleo Thai, not New Thai – and that’s fine.
So who is bringing the cuisine kicking and screaming into the future? At La Table de Tee, the cooking is at its heart European, with local produce and flavors thrown in. It’s good, but not always successful in execution – especially given the menu changes so often. Sra Bua, I’m led to believe, is doing something of this sort, but I’ve never been there myself. And the restaurant isn’t a realistic candidate to be the flagship for a new Thai culinary movement, since Danish chef Henrik Yde Anderson is, rightly or wrongly, always going to be accused of being the wrong nationality. As such, the “legitimacy” to lead a New Thai Cuisine – an “ahan thai mai” – belongs to Tae and Ton. I suspect that chefs across the city will be studying what they’re doing carefully – and that we’ll be seeing a lot more of its kind. Le Du is the future – I’ve no doubt about it.
Coconut’s Critics Table reviews are written based on unannounced visits by our writers and paid for by Coconuts Bangkok. No freebies here.
FIND IT:
11:30am – 2:30pm, Monday – Friday (Lunch)
6pm – 11pm, Monday – Saturday (Dinner)
399/3 Soi Silom 7
Dan Waites is the author of Culture Shock! Bangkok, a guide to culture, customs and expat life in the Thai capital. Follow him on Twitter: @danwaites
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