Baan Tepa Culinary Space — Restaurant in Hua Mak Subdistrict

My first two-star Michelin restaurant: Baan Tepa in Bangkok, led by Asia’s Best Female Chef of 2025. During this meal the servers were amused by how clean I returned my plates. No dishwasher needed as my spoon did the job. The experience starts with a garden tour, where many of the spices and vegetables used in the meal are grown. Then a kitchen tour and a welcome tea. Normally, I don’t enjoy tea, but this was excellent, served against the backdrop of the ingredients that would later appear in my meal.

Courses

Kill the Kapi (fermented shrimp paste) trio Three dishes built around kapi—delicious, fresh, and full of ingredients I’d never encountered before. The nakhaom bon stood out with its textural contrasts and unexpected elements like snake fruit, hairy eggplant, and slipper lobster.

Crab Crab Crab A celebration of crabs from across Thailand. Soft-shell crab garum, blue swimmer crab on purple rice toast.

Dong Dang noodles Presented in the most elegant china of the night. With salted duck egg and crispy sun-dried squid, this was rich, savory, and deeply satisfying.

River and Land One of the highlights. A whole Tapi river prawn paired with pork belly, set over scorched biodynamic jasmine rice, with sauces of prawn coral and pork reduction. The prawn claw was so perfectly cooked I sucked it clean like a lollipop.

White lotus A cold, white dish built around mushrooms and fermentation—lotus, snow mushroom, puffball mushroom, and more. Refreshing, palate-cleansing, and surprisingly complex but not my favorite blend of flavors.

Wagyu Mosaic and Blackened Curry The best beef of my life. A mosaic of wagyu beef and tendon, wrapped in dried cabbage, cooked to utter perfection. Tender, moist, unforgettable. The blackened curry, made from four fruits (eggfruit, banana, lime, sapodilla), was interesting but didn’t quite match the beef itself.

Pre-dessert Palate Cleanser A mix of unripe fruits and acidity: june plum ice shaped like a leaf topped guava poached in osmanthus, Thai gooseberries, sour mango, and more. Highlighting sustainability, a homemade vinegar made from wasted fruit was poured over the top.

Dessert — Lions Mane Mushroom Ice Cream One of my favorite foods, transformed. Lions mane mushroom paired with mace turned into ice cream with early local chocolate, wild mushroom crumble, pandan emulsion, wolffia (an aquatic plant), sunchoke cake, and candied nutmeg. Incredibly unique, I wanted a second serving.

Candy & Honey Finished with small honey-based candies, a honey tasting, and tea. While the process was cool, I didn’t love the tea itself.

Notes Beyond the Food • Service was excellent, as expected for two stars. • Details stood out: a growing wet nap for your hands, anti-slip paste under dishes so they never moved, ingredient boxes displayed neatly. • Bathrooms spotless, as they should be with towels fully replenished after each use.

Areas for Improvement • Spice level: I have a high spice tolerance, and Thai food usually delivers. Here, it felt toned down for Western diners. I would have preferred more heat. • Desserts: I wanted a second dessert course. The one served was excellent, but I left with a little more room in my stomach. To be fair, I prep for meals like this by eating light all day, smoothies only, so maybe that’s on me. • Garden area could have been slightly bigger and include a greater variety of vegetable and fruit products. Though understandable that it might not be reliable enough to consistently produce the needed ingredients.

Overall: Baan Tepa delivered an unforgettable two-star...

One of the best meals I ever had.

I added on the non alcoholic pairing and like all other fine dining in Bangkok, kombucha is involved again. It was forgettable.

But the food is very very well done. Flavours were spot on, temperatures and textures done right, and cooking was detailed and immaculate.

Started off the night with a kitchen tour. I thought a lot more can be done rather than just a first stop to have an amuse bouche and a welcome drink. More enthusiasm on the equipment they have, the operations flow, the cleanliness and hygiene etc! Maybe they did all these at the start and most people found that boring but I thought the whole reason for a kitchen tour was to share your excitement and hard work in the kitchen planning and construction!

First 3 bites were very modern interpretations is various nam priks around Thailand. Many other fine dining, even the other thai 2 star place started off with very light flavours which got stronger. Baan Tepa started off strong and ended even stronger and I really liked that. Thai food is usually always strongly flavored. Namprik kapi’s strong shrimp paste smell, nam prik pon pla fish flavour and nam prik pao’s sweet chilli jam all came though were many layers on ingredients.

Tom Jiew temperature was fantastically times. Cold enough to feel refreshing in my mouth, and within 2 seconds, got warmed and the flavours started coming through. Each chew tells me how slimy, fresh and umami the ingredients were. To nit pick, it was described as a soup made from sweet and hot basil. The sweet basil did not come through at all but the herbalicious hot basil punched all the way.

The dong dang noodle dish was one of my favourite dishes for the night. Aside from having perfectly cooked ingredients which was a given, the “inspired from wok fried” dish managed to impart this “wok flavour” into the sauce. The right balance between charred and burnt was in the extremely rich sauce. It was a flavour and texture bomb.

The river prawn was really beautiful to look at and done as perfectly as it could be. Nice char, perfectly grilled meat which was still translucent right in the middle topped with creamy tommalley sauce full of tomalley. Yes, I have had such sauce that lacked any tomalley umami. However, as perfect as this dish is, I think a regular perfectly grilled live river prawns with nam jim seafood is very hard to beat.

Duck dish was also my favourite and I enjoyed the rice. It was oily and flavourful and reminded me of a good classic claypot rice. I preferred it if they served the duck dishes together so I can pair each component with the rice.

Desserts hot and cold were modern interpretations and I liked the chewy glutinous flour texture of the yam paste waffle!

Service was excellent and friendly. While they had a script to follow, I felt that the staff were genuinely engaging and understood me well. It is really not cheap. But I haven’t experienced this kind of satisfaction in a similar concept restaurant yet. I will be...

The food was undeniably delicious and well worth the price, with each dish offering a unique flavor profile and depth. However, the service fell significantly short of expectations, leaving us deeply disappointed. Here are the key issues we encountered: • Guests who arrived later than us were served 1-2 courses earlier, and staff proceeded to clear their plates before ours, resulting in them finishing their meal ahead of us. • We were asked about wine pairing three separate times by three different staff members, which felt uncoordinated. • Service staff appeared disorganized, with different individuals taking turns to serve us, creating a “musical chairs” atmosphere. • Toward the end of the meal, we declined a third bottle of water as the course was almost complete. However, the staff opened it anyway, poured it for us. What’s worse, we noticed the second bottle was still unfinished before they took it away to bring out the third. • After finishing our meal, we stepped upstairs for photos. Upon returning, our table had been completely cleared, including an unfinished half-bottle of water, even though we had been away for only a short time. It felt as though we were being rushed out. • The storytelling by staff was inconsistent. The same server provided a very short explanation in Thai but gave a much more elaborate story in English to the neighboring table. It was almost as if the two explanations were for different dishes. • Most disappointing of all, we had informed the restaurant of a birthday surprise in advance. While I was in the restroom, the staff mistakenly delivered it to the wrong table and never attempted to rectify the situation. It simply disappeared, leaving us frustrated and disheartened.

This level of service does not align with the price point or the dining experience we had hoped for. Out of curiosity, we checked the 1-star Google reviews and found recurring complaints about service dating back over a year, indicating that the restaurant has not made efforts to address these issues. When we raised the birthday mishap via their official communication channel, the response was dismissive and indifferent.

If you plan to dine here and are expecting exceptional service, you might want to reconsider, as the restaurant appears to focus solely on its food while neglecting the...