During our weekend trip to Bangkok, we chose the ISSAYA SIAMESE CLUB for Sunday brunch.
Many blogs celebrates this place – the cuisine they serve is modern yet authentic, the ingredients are carefully chosen and they even grow them in their own kitchen garden. Meanwhile, the chef is one of the world’s best-known celebrity chefs for Thai cuisine, the set-up of the restaurant is Instagrammable, and so it goes on. These are more goes. These are more than enough reasons to visit!
Dining in the hidden garden. Fresh and organic vegetables from its garden.
“ISSAYA” means the rainy season in Thai, which is reflected in the design of the whole compound, including the inside and outside dining areas, courtyard, and kitchen garden. The place has a modern ambience, yet it makes you feel nostalgic at the same time.
The grow herbs and vegetables in the garden behind the dining area.
The good-looking, hard-to-choose-from menu. Here is what we chose, following our instinct.
As is usual in a good restaurant, we spent a long time going through almost the entire menu and chose what we really wanted to try. Here goes!
“YUM HUA PLEE. Banana blossom and the heat of palm salad, crispy shallots and roasted peanuts in a chili jam dressing.” This is a sweet appetizer, as opposed to salad. If you like peanut sauce like satay in Southeast Asia, this will be a must-try.
“YUM SOM-O. Issaya-style of heritage recipe pomelo salad with wok sauteed baby shrimp, hard-boiled egg and peanuts in a red chili dressing.”Every time we find a pomelo salad on a menu in Thailand, we order it without fail. And this time was no exception. Compared to the first appetizer, this tasted rather typical and that’s what we expect from a pomelo salad.
“MUSSAMUN GAE. Australian lamb shank simmered in mussamun curry served with pickled cucumber ajard.” This was our favorite of the day. It was our first time tasting Thai lamb curry. And lamb goes surprisingly well with Thai sauce! The rich curry sauce was amazing with its mixture of fresh herbs from the kitchen garden combined with fragrant spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, and coriander.
“KAO SOY OSSO BUCO. Slow cooked osso buco in Changmai curry sauce with egg noodles and chili oil.” This is a fusion of Thai and Western dishes. They pour the hot curry sauce from a classic pot in front of you, which was sort of gorgeous showtime designed to stimulate your appetite. The meat was soft but not too delicate, which meant it had a solid taste.
As the two main dishes were very meaty, we topped up with vegetables. The one vegetable looked like spinach but it actually tasted a little bitter. We loved it. If we’d ordered this as an appetizer, we’d have finished it!
Despite now feeling pretty full, we nevertheless ordered sticky rice with mango for dessert. This typical Thai sweet is arranged playfully at Issaya. The fresh mango with coconut milk and sticky rice is hidden inside mango-colored chocolate. At this point, our pace had slowed right down, but we enjoyed the last dish gradually and finished it. It was a long and fun brunch in a corner of Metropolitan Bangkok.
Issaya Siamese Club: 4 Soi Sri Aksom, Chua Ploeng Road, Sathom, Bangkok