Just when you thought Thai food couldn’t surprise you, out of left-field comes Siam Tea Room, not so much with outlandish concepts as startling tweakings.
The chefs and affable restaurant manager Charan Homtuanlom, all from food-forward families, brainstorm menus referencing their childhoods and professional careers in high class kitchens. Bouncing ideas around, combining disparate dishes to create multi-dimensional sensory experiences, just comes naturally and it’s amazing how new it all seems.
This while observing Marriott’s unflinching quality and sustainability stipulations, including campaigning against waste and working directly with sustainable producers. The prawns, for instance, come from an International Union for Conservation of Nature-certified aquaculture farm in Trad. Moreover, dishes are adjusted to be in-season, thereby obviating carbon-generating industrial processes.
You can enter Siam Tea Room directly from Soi 22, turning left onto a rustic-refined terrace and stepping through French windows into its relaxing embrace. From the lobby, the entrance is framed by an exquisite northern Thai-style wooden gable, crafted by the late great Thawan Duchanee, that survived the hotel’s amazing makeover.
This way you see why it’s called “Tea Room”: it doubles as a home of fine Thai cuisine and the hotel’s equally outstanding bakery. So guests swing by for coffee and a slice or afternoon tea as well as definitive Thai dishes and a beer or smoothie.
The dining room, glass-partitioned on the terrace-side, features low-slung, dark timber-frame sofas and arm chairs across smooth wooden tables. A stainless-frame multi-filament lighting nest hangs overhead. Cutlery is custom crafted by villagers in Aranyik, Ayutthaya. Modern Asiatic instrumental tunes loop.
It’s all also accessible from Benjasiri Park, as park-goers have discovered.
Tuck into a stack of baked free range pork ribs (375) with ground toasted rice tamarind dip, an Isan-inspired dish of marinated pork slowly charcoal-grilled. Served in a waft of smoke, the ribs are tender, piquant and, slathered with sticky sauce, irresistible.
Sustainable banana prawns crispy fried with garlic and bird’s eye chili (485) are another generous portion of perfection.
A Thai-Vietnamese cross-over, rice noodle wrapped river prawn spring rolls (234) burst with crunchy herbs, veggies, mango and blanched prawn, complemented with toothsome ginger, shallot and garlic sauce.
Chef’s grandma’s spicy and sour pomelo and green mango salad (230) stars crispy fluff-fried Siam sepat fish, found in estuaries, and co-stars braised pork with orange zest. A light tamarind and sugar palm dressing binds three citrus fruits – mangorib, pomelo and som saa – delectably. The umami pork complements the sour citrus and fresh fish flavours irresistibly.
Fluff-fried sepat (285) also comes with crispy egg basket over stir-fried rice with green mango, bergamot and lemongrass salad taking that delectable fish-citrus cross to another level.
Tom yam pla kang features catfish from Charan’s home province of Kanchanaburi. It’s soaked in water with kaffir lime and lemongrass to strip it off its strong odour before cooking with spicy bay leaf and chilli paste to create an ambrosial spicy-sour fish cocktail.
An appropriately light dessert is Compote Aloe Vera, butterfly pea syrup (190), chilled, chewy and floral. Or try toasted butter brioche with pandan custard and fresh young coconut (234), like an awesome vintage Thai donut.
Mango mint smoothie (125) is thick with flavour and butterfly pea cordial springs to life when added with lime juice. Among others, Chalawan Pale Ale (255) is served, along with excellent smoothies and Thai-slanted teas & coffees.
Open: 07.00 – 23.00 hrs
Tel. 02 059 5999
