Had a fantastic meal at Saawaan last night in Bangkok, was surprised I was able to get a reservation the day before.
Used to have a michelin star, seems well deserved and not sure why they did not have one the past two years.
11 course – 2800baht or about 77USD, probably one of the most bang for your buck 11 course meals I’ve had anywhere. Three small surprises not included on the menu. Each dish was highlighting a different cooking technique.
1 – mixture of tiny dishes highlighting a few notable thai flavors including fish sauce, chili pepper and coconut cream. The makeshift pepper was like a macaron in the shape of a chili with chili marmalade in the middle, delightful, the other dishes were good but not as memorable.
Raw dish – blue swimmer crab with fresh mango wrapped in slightly unripe different kind of mango with a cashew nut sauce. Sweet with a little bit of tart flavor from the unripe mango, the crab was perfect.
Fermented dish – krill with pork jowl, pickled jicama and a phuket pineapple foam. Delicious, a very interesting and strong combo of flavors.
“Yum” dish – probably the only major miss to me, flavor was not much of anything besides egg. It had eggplant and kaffir leaf but I barely tasted anything but egg.
Boiled – absolutely incredible, intense broth similar to a tom kha, with beef and palmheart. One of the best dishes I’ve had in the last couple months.
Steamed – squid with som saa and kalamansi, it was tender but not intensely flavorful like the fermented, boiled or raw dish. Decent.
Charcoal – another fantastic few bites, succulent and perfectly cooked lobster with ginger and white turmeric, another intensely flavorful dish.
8 and 9. Curry – southern thai style smoked curry, the original is served with chicken but I am allergic so they gave me grouper, it was another fantastic and very strong intense dish, the rice was cooked in a banana blossom which gave it a great smoky flavor.
Pretty basic dessert of dark chocolate, peanuts and vanilla ice cream. The vanilla was fantastic, the dark chocolate was just okay.
Petit fours – good but nothing phenomenal, the orange tart and chili sugar cube were decent.
In total a solid 4/5 for me if this had cost double the price, easily a 5/5 since I paid less than 100 Dollars for it.
by androidsheep92