Any minute now you might find yourself keeping an eye out for a latter-day incarnation of Marco Polo or some other intrepid connoisseur of oriental culinary delights dropping by for some Cantonese delicacies.
Silk Road at The Athenee Hotel, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Bangkok, on Wireless Road may just have that curious reverie-inducing effect. The restaurant, you see, can spring surprises on you by putting you in a flighty state of mind.
Ensconced on the third floor of the upmarket hotel, Silk Road boasts a modern, appropriately Chinese décor in the Shanghainese style. Silky greens, full-blooded reds and lambent golds dominate based on the old Chinese belief that these colours promote good health and good luck.
Decorating walls are classical Chinese calligraphy and framed charcoal drawings of intricately costumed ladies, debonair gentlemen and bewhiskered factotums from the Middle Kingdom. Artful penumbra lends the eatery just the right touch of mystique.
Then again, presumably most people don’t come here to admire the décor; they come here for the food. And as well they should. Silk Road awaits them with a veritable cornucopia of Cantonese specialties: a seemingly endless variety of tasty dim sum dishes, mouth-watering double-boiled soups, succulent spring rolls and delectable Peking duck pancakes.
You will look for traditional Chinese shark fin soup in vain, though. The restaurant no longer serves it out of environmental considerations — which is just as well.
With all the gastronomic delights of Cantonese cuisine on offer, you may wind up experiencing a titillating gastronomic overload that urges you to order more and more and some more. Loosening your belt repeatedly might well be necessary during lunch or dinner.
Chef Cheng Kam Sing and his team of 13 cooks busy themselves in the kitchen, painstakingly producing dishes with loving care from the finest and freshest ingredients. A native of Guangdong Province in China, Chef Kam honed his culinary skills first at his father’s knee then under several celebrated chefs in Hong Kong before relocating to Bangkok, where he has worked at The Athenee Hotel, formerly known as Plaza Athenee Bangkok, for the past 17 years.
It is here that the Chinese chef, an amiable man with a tight-lipped Mona Lisa smile, has earned himself plaudits and plenty of loyal customers among the crème de la crème of Thai society. Kam has hosted and done catering for some of Thailand’s most illustrious figures, including members of the country’s royal family.
But you don’t have to be rich or famous to be treated well at Silk Road. “Each guest is important for us,” Chef Kam stresses. “We want them to keep coming back.”
Cultivating a discriminating clientele of gourmets and attracting return customers entails more than just setting high standards and keeping them. It also entails always trying to do better. “We can’t stay still,” the chef says. We always have to improve.”
The Bangkok-based chef follows culinary trends in Hong Kong closely and may decide to emulate some of them by tweaking a dish a bit here, adding to another dish a bit there, while always staying true to the essence of traditions. “Making delicious dishes is a daily challenge but it’s an achievement too,” Chef Kam observes. “We have to impress each dinner with every dish.”
He especially prides himself on his double-boiled sliced whelk with Chinese black mushrooms in consommé soup. He also recommends his trademark fried rice, which he has himself conceived with a delicious blend of salted fish, dried scallops, dried shrimps, diced Hong Kong kale and scrambled eggs.
All dishes arrive with optional seasonings, but the chef had rather you did not use them much. “I prefer customers not to use seasonings with some of the dishes, especially the soups, so that they can better appreciate their intended flavours,” Kam explains.
Point taken. A good thing, too, it turns out. The stir-fried prawns with Beijing sauce are sublime. The deep-fried crab claws wrapped in vermicelli are delectable. The steamed minced pork with Chinese wolfberry is a pleasant surprise.
While you pick and choose from such fine fares, you can slurp away contentedly from small bowls of thick soup with bamboo pity, dried scallops and egg white or brown soup with Taiwanese bamboo abalone. You can also go all out on the dim sum in true gourmand style by ordering them à la carte or else opting for one of three set menus (for 750 baht each).
By the time desserts arrive in the form of rice dumplings with roasted black sesame filling served with piping-hot ginger soup, you’ll be blissfully satiated.
Marco Polo, eat your heart out.
The Athenee Hotel, A Luxury Collection Hotel, Bangkok, Silk Road. Floor 3., 61 Wireless Road. Tel. 02 650 8800. www.theatheneehotel.com.
