Baan Phraya — Restaurant in Khlong Ton Sai Subdistrict

The fragrant smell of hoisin sauce and sea salt makes its way to your nose, fragrant and smelling just like the ocean. The seafood, fresh from the river separating IconSiam and Mandarin Oriental Hotel is deep fried after dipping in cornstarch by hand in the wok and put on your plate, sizzling hot. The takeaways are also especially thoughtful here. They pour or put your dish into a small plastic bag, then sealing it tightly. Then, they place it inside a light turquoise cardboard takeaway box and then inside a mandarin oriental bag for you to eat back home or in the hotel. It looks extremely luxurious. The service is also out of this world. I would like to praise Jim especially. Jim works at Baan Phraya as a waiter and he is very thoughtful and warm-hearted. He also taught us some Thai, such as ขอบคุณมาก and สวัสดี. These phrases mean thank you so much and hello. He was also very thoughtful and gave us new aprons after the cooking session, cooking recipes as well as a file holding new recipes, as the old ones they gave us that morning might’ve gotten dirty after the lesson. The chef was also very nice and he taught us a lot of tips and was able to answer our questions about cooking honeycomb and sugar. The only downside of this restaurant is that it is a bit small and crowded for the resting space outside the kitchen. The door is also always open and they never close it , so the mosquitos and other insects are able to join our feasts-in a bad way. This might seem a little bad but it’s fine, I just have a really bad bug phobia. But if you’re scared of mosquitos you should try putting on lemongrass balm. It’s nice for relaxing and it gets the bugs away. That’s two benefits! Now let’s talk atmosphere. They have a herb garden outside, where they pick their herbs, including basil, lemongrass, rosemary, mint and surprisingly, aloe vera. The garden was built in honor of the owner and first chef and cook of the restaurant, Phraya. The restaurant was casually named after him when it opened. The restaurant Baan Phraya used to be a place for socialising with high level government officials from around the world, later turned into a one star Michelin restaurant that served traditional Thai food with a great twist. The chefs all have separate restaurants in north or west Thailand, all with a solid one Michelin star. They are all great and experienced chefs. Food: it’s a complicated flavor banquet. Try for yourselves! I like to say...

A fine dining restaurant with the most impressive dessert cart I’ve seen since the cheese/dessert carts of Desde 1911 in Madrid. Incredibly generous with the quantity of food in overall (possibly too much, haha), and the staff couldn’t be kinder, with genuine smiles all around.

Ultimately, Baan Phraya doesn’t get a perfect rating from me, because I’ve eaten better renditions of almost every dish / major ingredient at other restaurants (e.g. both the grilled river prawn and beef at Nusara were cooked with better technique). Except for the two salads, which were 10/10 for me. You can really taste the quality of the dressing, and the tiger prawns in the paco fern salad were perfectly cooked.

What this restaurant excels at is giving a comprehensive introduction to Thai food (especially since the preparations are not too innovative and modern), at a A-but-not-A+ standard. And that’s something to celebrate! It would be a place for me to bring friends who don’t have a lot of time in Thailand, but want a firm introduction to all the flavours...

The atmosphere and service was excellent. The Champagne selection was wonderful. Though i am native Thai, i found myself to have a difficulty to understand what the chef want to express in each dish. It recalls my memory of a performance by a Russian piano virtuoso. The performance showed the speed and accuracy of his finger, but not the beauty of his music. As a whole, the course would be "power of spices in Thai cuisine". If the chef would consider lowering the level of spiciness, it would let us hear the voice and beauty of each ingredients. The over-powered spiciness was repeatedly served in consecutive sequence exhausted the sensitivity of the taste buds and i could not clearly taste any details after the 4-5 dishes. The 9 kinds of Thai sweets served as closure dish were of much lower skill level to its previous courses. It is unacceptable considering they are served as a part of...