Walking all over walking street can be exhausting. For the eyes! So as you cross the Walking street and head to the beach, the walk can be exhausting for your brains, now. Deciding where to eat is a huge huge burden. When you are on tour, you want to find the balance between not going wrong and experimenting! While Thai Express looked like a chain of restaurants, we didn't know if it was and  decided to walk in!

The menu was inviting and we ordered things that were on their best seller list. The Massaman Chicken Gravy, Thai Basil Chicken, a beautiful Thai soup and the grilled Chicken thigh! The Thai Basil chicken that came first was a stunner. It was spicy, but inviting every taste bud on the tongue and was a flavour bomb. The basil and spices were noticeable individually and all three of us loved every morsel of it!! Beautiful dish. But it was upstaged by the main course, the Massaman Chicken gravy. Oh wow, it was a stunner! Served with some roti and (we ordered separately) rice, this was a beautiful chicken gravy that was another flavour bomb.

The grilled chicken came last and the first bite I took was bland and tasteless. I left the spoon before my friend pointed to the sauce, dipped the chicken in the sauce, placed it in his mouth and let out an orgasm! I guess, the sauce was there for a reason. It was yummy, but certainly did not deserve the reaction it got from my friend!

I fell in love with the Thai Iced tea, so I ordered it everywhere. Looks like they all come from the same powder as they were all the same everywhere, but that is my go-to drink in Thailand! The meal cost us about 500 Thai Bhat, which is about Rs. 1000.

Thai Express is on Beach Road, about 200m from Walking Street, Pattaya! 

The mention of Thailand brings about different images to different people. For food lovers, Thailand is another food paradise! A beautiful one at that. But having experienced Thai food in multiple countries will be of almost no help when you actually arrive in Thailand. While the tourist places may be monotonous, it also gives you a chance to savour food from around Thailand in one place! You will be surprised that there is more than just the green and yellow curries! In this Pattaya series, let's look at some yummy foods from various spots! Nope, we couldn't get reservations at Gagan's in Bangkok, but this post is all about Pattaya! 

1.  PATTAYA FLOATING MARKET

The Pattaya floating market is the largest in Thailand and gives you glimpses from food from around Thailand. Everything from ice creams to bite sized foods to crepes, all in complete Thai avatars are found every few steps. Starting off with a 200 THB entry (900 if you want to take the boat ride, but I'd recommend the walk), this is a place to go with an open mind. 

The coconut ice cream would be great after your journey to the market! Served in a coconut shell, this ice cream is creamy and yummy and has a strong flavour of coconut, not just a hint. 

The stick foods! Yes, you may need bravery, but trust me, all of us were fine after the foods. The prawns are fresh, but what caught my attention was the way in which the crab claws were beautifully removed with the shape in tact! Since I am not a fan of fish, I skipped the fish sauce dip and enjoyed it quite as much as the others did!

My favourite dish of the entire walk was this peanut candy snack in two varieties. Priced at about 30 THB (<$1 or Rs 60), this is a steal as you get about 8 pieces of lip smacking goodness in two packages. The clear one and the momo-like ones were both super yummy!

Tiny crepes! Yes, these are crispy crepes and for about 25 THB, you get 10 pieces. There is the sweet kind with a custard laced with some matcha green tea, while the savoury one has dried prawns. Both were yum!

We saw lots of people buying the grilled rice cake on sticks. While I don't know what everybody liked in them, I could not take more than a few bites! It seemed a hit with the crowd though!

The curly instant ice cream! This was another super hit! Made from scratch, with (I guess liquid nitrogen), there is lots of flavour and a lot of theatre before the ice cream reaches you! We had the matcha green tea ice cream with some toppings and it was yum!

Of course there was a choice of insects and scorpions, fried, grilled and almost every cooking method used! Nope, I didn't try it!

2. THAI RESTAURANTS

I am talking about the one off Thai restaurants and not the ones in malls. Small roadside shops with a few chairs dole out some super yummy foods. One such place, called THE KITCHEN, a few meters away from Walking Street is one such place! We had dinner a few times and invariably asked for their Yellow Noodles, the Phad Thai noodles, the Tom Kha, which became my new favourite Thai soup beating the Tom Yum. It is a large bowl of white soup that you could eat with the Jasmine rice as a full meal! Or 3 could share as starters!

3. THAI ICED TEA!

This became a staple for me in Thailand. The super awesome Thai Iced Tea. This is a Matcha green tea with milk based iced tea, unlike the non milk iced tea that is the norm in most places! The flavour of the matcha is unmistakable and gives you the comfort that cold coffee usually does! Almost every restaurant has this and is usually priced between 90-110 THB (About $3 or Rs. 200). The glass is tall and the portion, hearty!

4. GREEN NOODLES, MK.

Yes, mall foods may not be the best, but if you find some great place, you will be really happy! We found one such place called MK Korean grill, CENTRAL Mall! While the restaurant deserves a separate blog post on its own for the Korean Boiler on every table, the green Noodles with duck was a stand out dish from the menu! Served with dips of all kinds, the noodles simply stood out!

5. GREEN TEA ICE CREAM FLOAT!

This is the ice cream version of the Matcha Green tea. Same flavours, different medium!! 

6. DURIAN

Yes, it maybe the stinkiest fruit on earth, but that doesn't stop people from making all kinds of stuff with it. And doesn't stop people from buying all these kinds of stuff that people make! The durian chips are my favourite, but I was brave enough to try the Durian Ice cream. Yummy to start off, but leaves a sort of disgusting after taste! But the initial yumminess will draw you (or the disgusting after taste will turn you off, depending on who you are)! I was the former and was able to finish the entire box of durian ice cream, with some difficulty of course!

7. THE BANANA PANCAKE

While most of the vendors serving these have a lot more options, the banana pancakes in Thailand are yummy without having to add Nutella! The banana is folded in the batter and a beautiful thin pancake is made and folded multiple times to give you a beautiful snack! While partying on Walking Street, don't miss this guy! He makes awesome stuff! 50 THB (<$1, Rs 100)

 8. BICYCLE NOODLE SOUP

If you have followed Obama, the US president and Antony Bourdin, you will know how a $6 meal left a lasting impression! This is no different. Sit on the street. Kitchen attached to the bicycle. Choice of noodles, meat and veggies. Choice of toppings. Free smiles and a hearty bowl of soup! It could be lunch or dinner!

9. THAI BASIL CHICKEN and MASSAMAN GRAVY

Every good Thai restaurant will probably have this on the menu. At Thai Express, this was among the two stand out dishes that we had. It was spicy, yet so flavourful that you might keep eating it while blowing smoke from your mouth and ears! The Massaman Chicken gravy is another a super yummy dish I guess it has Indian roots because of the flavours! Served with some flat bread, these two were stand out dishes. The restaurant was excellent and there is a full blog post about the restaurant.

http://www.chennaifoodie.com/2016/08/thai-express.html

10. EGG FOLDED NOODLES

I don't know what the egg does to the noodles, but this noodles from a restaurant called THAI CHICKEN AND NOODLES on the Beach Road, Pattaya was a unique dish. Nice flat noodles tossed with chicken and the usual stuff then gets stuffed inside a egg nest and then cooked slightly! The flavour profile doubles and gives you a nice complete meal with some fancy looking nest and great tasting noodles!

There is always a 11th, isn't it?

11. THE TURKISH ICE CREAM

The show is amazing. The ice cream is not! Thought not Thai, there are few Turkish Ice Cream guys on the streets of Thailand!

        

Is there something else that we should have tried in Thailand? Let us know! 

I completely understand why Antony Bourdin took Obama for the noodle soup in Vietnam! It was a no brainer, really! While Mr. President had the Pork Noodle Soup, two Vietnamese chefs are in Chennai recreating the soupy magic with their awesome awesome Beef Noodle Soup. Apparently cooked for over 10 hours, the Saigon festival at Benjarong is all about the soup and the starters!

If there is one stand alone restaurant in Chennai that doles out the best Food Festivals, it has to be Benjarong. This time around, it has taken one step forward and created a new printed menu for the festival, complete with some of their old favourites, so there is just one menu! Prices are on par with their regular menu, so kudos for that too.

The typical platter with the leaf and condiments did not arrive and my friend and me thought we were going to be disappointed. Far from it. The Beef Noodle soup, simply was stunning. Apparently in Vietnam, this is a whole meal by itself, but here it is best you ask for a bowl for yourself! I am still searching for words to describe this soup!

My biggest grouse is that when you have a festival, there should be an option for a platter, at least with the starters. No such thing on the menu, so I requested if they could make a platter. They happily did. The platter was another stunner! But two dishes in the platter were simply mouth watering. A little beef rolled onto lemongrass! Oh-mi-Gawd! Soft, succulent and yummy, this is one of the best starters I have had in a long long time! Another dish in the platter, a grilled chicken in a crispy fried outer shell, that I think is rice paper. Yummy. Yummy! The rest of the platter was pretty good too, with a nice satay, a grilled fish and Vietnamese Rice paper spring rolls. Platter was Rs. 999 for two pieces each of 5 starters!

Ideally with the soup and the platter, nothing more is required. There were some interesting things on the menu, but we moved to dessert and ordered two, a mung bean cake and a crystal banana cake. The mung bean cake was dense and full of flavour, while the crystal banana cake wasn't all that great. Having skipped main course, we were adventurous and had one more dessert, a mung bean something with ginger syrup. It was super yummy!

A meal for two with a starter platter, the definitely must try soup and dessert would be around Rs. 2000! If not in the mood for a platter, you could go with a single starter priced around Rs. 350-650 and get a main course.

*image with President Obama and Anthony Bourdin belongs to the Mr. Anthony Bourdin. The photo is posted here for a reference and no copyright infringement is intended. 

                             

And Park Hyatt shows the way!

A food festival, a-la-carte done to perfection. Now a festival like Thai Food festival can be boring. I mean, there are specialty Thai restaurants in Chennai and some very good ones, so what can you bring to the table that is new? Turns out you don't have to!

What better way than to fly in their Thai chef from Park Hyatt Dubai, a Thai native to whip up some for Chennaities? No buffet. Simply off the menu. Would have loved a set menu though, but knowing Park Hyatt, you simply have to tell the chef to create a four course meal for you and they will oblige!

Being a bunch of five people, we had the freedom to try a lot of dishes. Amazingly, the vegetarians had a field day!!! While the simple raw mango and peanut salad is quite common here, the second starter, the seafood salad was a stunner! Along with some mojito, the salad, with a melange of flavours, but dominated by a kind of chilli sourness was simply amazing. With prawns and scallops (I didn't taste any fish) it was a fabulous start to the meal.

And then a fantastic dish. While our vegetarians friends could taste our seafood PHAD THAI, we all dived into their vegetarian PHAD THAI. With some crunch, it beat the non veg version by a mile! And then the non vegetarians had their trump card, the glass noodles with prawns!!! Lovely!! While we thought the best had come, there came the best dish of the day, the THAI GREEN CURRY. Mix with rice and it was heavenly!

Desserts were simple. Everything had coconut milk and jackfruit and water chestnut! The sticky rice with mango was nice ending to the awesome meal we had!!

The festival is on till the 29th of April and looks like we are having a deluge of food festivals in Chennai this month! Look forward to more in the coming days. 

Chennai restaurants are waking upto platters?

So, in an attempt to reduce the amount of food that goes in, that really doesn't need to go in......OK, you with me here? Hmmm....an example would be the fourth piece of spring roll. Or the 3rd piece of fried chicken. So, in that attempt, which was herculean earlier, but with easier now with platters, I was really really happy to see a food festival, and one that I quite love being spiced up! With platters.

This year, Benjarong is celebrating the Bangkok Street Food festival along with the Songkran! And real street side sea food with street side drinks. Not street side prices, but hey!

The leaf with condiments is a staple at Benjarong, but today I thought it was unusually tasty and thats why the photo came in.

Anyways, so the street food thing. They've brought in some fresh flavours and according to the staff, who seem to know quite a bit about the food, stuff has been brought straight off the streets of Bangkok. I don't remember eating dim sums or satay at Benjarong, but the fusion stuff, that comes from the streets has made it to the menus of one of the best Thai restaurants in Chennai.

That orange thing in the photo. Its not orange juice. Not a mocktail. It is tea! Yes, tea. Orange colour. Yes, tea. It was fantastic. Why? The flavours of tea were well and truly there, but though sweet, the sweetness did not overpower the tea. So you could distinctly taste the flavours of the tea! Loved every sip of it. Apparently popular in the streets of Bangkok! Intriguing because I would kill to know what all goes into the tea!!! It had ONE unique flavour that I am not able to point my fingers or brain to and it is going to be a life mission to find out what that was!!!

And then starters. Life was easier with a pre plated platter of spring rolls. Two pieces each of chicken, crab and prawn!!! Simple dishes, though. The prawn was a stand out with little spring onion strips coming out adding so much flavour than the usual bland spring rolls. Then came the Thai dim sums. With the niceness of the Chinese dim sum and the flavours of thai, this was excellent.

Then the soup. Again. Street style, tom yummy, but not tom yum. Slightly different. It had noodles like Top Ramen, but different size and shape. The soup was yummy. It was called Tom Yum Mama Goon! Indeed. The thing with soup is that it serves two, which means you will run out space for main course. Not a bad idea. Dinner was filling without being stuffy.

Dessert of course! An excellent Jack Fruit Home made ice cream served with cream and steamed jackfruits was the perfect end to the meal.

Prices are on par with their regular menu and a meal for two will set you back by Rs. 2000. The festival is on till the third week of April, I think.